Over the past year, the U.S. government has acquired an unprecedented investment portfolio, including a majority stake in GM and a large ownership stake in Chrysler. These investments have raised a plethora of difficult policy challenges. One of the most important is the ongoing risk that private business decisions may get transformed into public policy [...]
Archive for July, 2009
Standing Firm on Auto Dealers
Posted in Budget, Politics, Regulation, tagged Auto, Budget, Chrysler, Defense, GM, Politics on July 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Defending the Fed’s Independence
Posted in Economy, History, Macroeconomics, Politics, tagged Federal Reserve, Interest Rates, Macroeconomics, Politics on July 15, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I’m not usually one to sign public petitions, but I made an exception today for a key issue: defending the independence of the Federal Reserve. Like many other economists (here’s the list of signatories, with a day’s lag), I am troubled by the anti-Fed rhetoric emanating from some parts of the Congress. The Fed has taken [...]
Counting Stimulus Efforts
Posted in Budget, Economy, History, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, jobs, Macroeconomics, Politics, Stimulus on July 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Today, the Washington Post has a letter to the editor about counting stimulus efforts. I think the letter is pithy and on-point, but that might be because I wrote it. Anyway, my conclusion is: [T]here have already been two rounds of stimulus since the recession started in December 2007. The first, enacted in February 2008 [...]
CBO on the House Health Bill
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health, Politics on July 14, 2009 | 5 Comments »
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary analysis of the House health bill, aka the Tri-Committee bill. Among the key findings: 1. The bill uses five levers to increase health insurance coverage: Expanding Medicaid Subsidies for purchasing insurance through new exchanges An individual mandate (enforced by a penalty if you lack coverage) [...]
Health Insurance and Labor Markets
Posted in Economy, Health, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, CBO, Health, Income, jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment on July 14, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Health insurance is not just a health issue. It’s also a jobs issue. Why? Because about 60% of non-elderly Americans get their health insurance through an employer or a labor union. As a result, health insurance and employment are closely related. As lawmakers consider changes to our system of health insurance, they should therefore keep an eye [...]
House Prices and Productivity
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged GDP, Housing, Income, Macroeconomics, Productivity on July 13, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Many economists, myself included, refer to the recent boom and bust in house prices as a bubble, whose foundation lay in a combination of credit market excesses and human imperfections. Fundamentals certainly played a role as well, but bubble forces were particularly important. In a short paper recently published by the New York Federal Reserve, Jim [...]
TARP Warrants: Auctions and the Oversight Panel
Posted in Finance, Uncategorized, tagged Auction, Banks, Finance, Stock Market, TARP, Warrants on July 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Good news on the TARP warrant front today (previous installments here and here). First off, Reuters reports that: JPMorgan Chase & Co, seeking to completely extricate itself from a federal bailout program, has asked the government to auction warrants to buy the bank’s stock, after the Treasury Department demanded too high a price for the bank [...]
The Citigroup Repo
Posted in Finance, tagged Arbitrage, Banks, Citigroup, Finance, Stock Market, TARP on July 10, 2009 | 6 Comments »
As I’ve noted in a series of posts (here’s the most recent), there’s an anomaly in the pricing of Citigroup securities. Several issues of Citi’s preferred stock are scheduled to convert into common by the end of the month. Yet the common stock has been trading at a significant premium to the preferred in recent [...]
Wolfram Alpha, Unemployment, and the Future of Data
Posted in Data, Internet, Macroeconomics, Technology, tagged Data, Google, jobs, Search, unemployment, Wolfram Alpha on July 10, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I’ve received a number of helpful responses to my post about the strengths and weaknesses of Google’s efforts to transform data on the web. Reader DD, for example, reminded me that I ought to run the same test on Wolfram Alpha, which I briefly mentioned in my post on Google’s antitrust troubles. Wolfram Alpha is devoting [...]
The Exploding Federal Deficit
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, GSE, Interest Rates, TARP, Taxes on July 9, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its latest snapshot on the federal budget. The headlines: The budget deficit was $1.1 trillion during the first nine months of the fiscal year (through June). That’s up from $286 billion at this point last year. Spending has risen 21% over last year, while tax revenues have fallen 18%. For [...]
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