As I’ve noted in a series of posts, the budget deficit this year will be gigantic. Indeed, it’s already reached almost $1.3 trillion. That’s big money, even in Washington. As Stan Collender points out over at Capital Gains and Games, however, the absolute amount of the deficit is not the only thing that matters politically. [...]
Archive for August, 2009
Budget Deficit Likely Lower Than Forecast
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Budget, Politics, TARP on August 8, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Turning Guantanamo into Hong Kong
Posted in Economy, International, Macroeconomics, tagged Cuba, Development, Guantanamo, Hong Kong, International, Romer on August 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
At the TED conference in Oxford last month, Paul Romer put forward a big idea: charter cities. His basic vision is that the best way to promote growth in developing countries may be to start over. Of course, you can’t just sweep away the existing system of economic and political institutions; they may be killing [...]
Federal Deficit Up to $1.3 trillion
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, GSE, Interest Rates, TARP, Taxes on August 7, 2009 | 9 Comments »
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its latest snapshot on the federal budget. The headlines: The budget deficit was almost $1.3 trillion during the first ten months of the fiscal year (through July). That’s up from $389 billion at this point last year. Spending has risen 21% over last year, while tax revenues have [...]
A Less-Bad Jobs Report
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment, Wages on August 7, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The headlines in today’s jobs report were better than expected: Payrolls fell by “only” 247,000 in July, somewhat smaller than the 325,000 that analysts had anticipated. The unemployment rate ticked down to 9.4%. If you dig into the numbers a bit further, you find some other encouraging nuggets: Job losses in May and June were [...]
Big Salaries at Netflix
Posted in Business, tagged Business, Compensation, Netflix on August 6, 2009 | 10 Comments »
The slide deck describing the culture at Netflix has some real gems (ht kottke.org). For example, here are three elements of the company’s compensation practices: Unlike many companies, we practice “adequate performance gets a generous severance package.” (slide 26) Netflix vacation policy and tracking: “there is no policy or tracking” (“There is also no clothing [...]
Sub-Debt = Senior Debt?
Posted in Economy, Finance, International, tagged Banks, Debt, Finance, Interest Rates, International on August 6, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I was flipping through a report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) recently (ht Torsten Slok) and came across this fascinating six-pack of charts: The charts show how much banks have had to pay in interest on their senior, subordinated, and guaranteed debt, relative to the interest rates of comparable government bonds. For example, [...]
Collapsing Tax Revenues
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Taxes on August 5, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The Office of Debt Management at Treasury has released another fascinating set of charts about the government’s finances and debt outlook. One that particularly caught my eye was this depiction of the collapse in tax revenues: Fittingly, the red lines represent the current fiscal year. As you can see, corporate income taxes are lagging far behind [...]
Treasury: More Borrowing, Less Short-Term
Posted in Budget, Economy, Finance, Macroeconomics, Uncategorized, tagged Budget, Debt, Finance, Interest Rates on August 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The Treasury released its quarterly update on its borrowing needs yesterday. The headline is that Treasury expects to borrow $406 billion during July, August, and September. That’s a gigantic figure, but it is down from the roughly $530 billion that Treasury borrowed during those three months last year. When combined with $1.4 trillion in borrowing during [...]
Payroll Employment Ticks Up 1
Posted in Life on August 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I am happy to report that I will be a Visiting Professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute during the 2009-2010 academic year. It will be fun to return to the classroom after an eleven-year hiatus. Given everything I’ve learned in the intervening years, I think I will teach economics quite differently. For example, I [...]
Still Not the Great Depression 2.0
Posted in Economy, History, Macroeconomics, tagged GDP, Great Depression, Macroeconomics on August 2, 2009 | 10 Comments »
One of my first posts cautioned against comparing the current economic downturn to the Great Depression. Our economy is certainly in terrible shape, as Friday’s GDP data confirmed. Indeed, it’s the worst downturn since World War II. But it still pales in comparison to the horror of the Great Depression. Since we received fresh data on [...]
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