It remains to be seen whether our elected leaders have much enthusiasm for dealing with America’s troubling fiscal trajectory. But the policy commentariat has embraced the issue with relish. If you have a few hours (or days) to ponder these issues, let me recommend the following: Train Wreck: A Conference on America’s Looming Fiscal Crisis, [...]
Archive for January, 2010
Key Readings on America’s Fiscal Plight
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt on January 18, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Federal Reserve Earns $46 Billion for Taxpayers
Posted in Budget, Finance, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, Federal Reserve, Finance on January 12, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The Federal Reserve system is doing its part to cut the budget deficit (at least for now). Treasury will receive $46.1 billion of profits from the Federal Reserve profits for fiscal 2009. That’s about a third higher than the amount remitted for 2008. According to the Fed’s news release this morning, the following items drove profits: [...]
Treasury is Issuing More TIPS
Posted in Budget, Finance, tagged Budget, Debt, Inflation, TIPS on January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment »
As noted by the Wall Street Journal this morning (“U.S., in Nod to Creditors, Is Adding TIPS Issues“), Treasury is issuing more Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS). Today’s auction involves $10 billion 10-year notes; one estimate suggest that total TIPS issuance this year will be $80-85 billion. Still small compared to our nation’s overall borrowing needs [...]
The Wonders of Costa Rica
Posted in International, Life, tagged Costa Rica, International, Life on January 9, 2010 | 3 Comments »
On Thursday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof had a wonderful piece about Costa Rica, home of “The Happiest People“) (ht Catie). Kristof reports that Costa Ricans are the happiest people in the world, at least according to three broad surveys. Why? Kristof offers the following hypothesis: What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable [...]
A Sobering Jobs Report
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, jobs, unemployment on January 8, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Today’s jobs report invites both negative and positive interpretations. The positives are fewer, so let’s start with them: With job losses of 85,000, December was the second-best (or, if you prefer, second-least-bad) month since January 2008. With today’s revisions, November actually showed job gains of 4,000, the first increase since December 2007. Put that all [...]
The Budget Deficit Keeps Rising
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, FDIC, GSE, TARP on January 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The federal government racked up a $389 billion deficit during the first three months of the fiscal year (October through December), according to estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office yesterday. That’s $56 billion more than during the first quarter of last year, almost a 17% increase. (A portion of that increase is due to [...]
Will Rising Government Debt Hurt Growth?
Posted in Budget, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, Debt, GDP, Macroeconomics on January 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Every January America’s economists gather for their annual conference. There are far more papers than one could ever read (or want to read), so you need a strategy to choose the most important. In recent years, your optimal strategy should have included the papers by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (see, e.g., this prescient paper [...]
The Coming Budget Battle over TARP and Jobs
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Budget, CBO, jobs, TARP on January 5, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The House and Senate appear to be on a collision course about how to pay for a new jobs bill (aka a stimulus bill). The issue? Whether Congress can pay for new jobs programs by cutting back on TARP. The House embraced that approach in the bill it passed before Christmas. That bill–H.R. 2847, the [...]
What’s the United States Worth? $1.4 Quadrillion
Posted in Finance, Macroeconomics, tagged Debt, Finance, GDP on January 4, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Happy 2010, everyone. To kick off the new year, I am in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. As Paul Kedrosky notes, there are lots of sessions on the financial crisis and its aftermath. Perhaps not surprisingly, many presentations have a pessimistic tone. But there are pockets of optimism, including Robert [...]
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