The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first look at Q1 GDP growth this morning. BEA estimates that GDP grew at a solid 3.2% annual pace in the first quarter. That’s slower than the 5.6% pace of the previous quarter, but is otherwise the strongest showing since the third quarter of 2007. The following chart [...]
Archive for April, 2010
Consumers Boosted GDP in Q1
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, GDP, Macroeconomics on April 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Greece, the Other PIIGS, and “The Chastening”
Posted in Economy, Finance, History, International, Uncategorized, tagged Germany, Greece, IMF, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain on April 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Several colleagues recently suggested that now is a propitious time to read (or re-read) Paul Blustein’s “The Chastening.” The book recounts how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G-7 nations struggled to combat the Asian, Russian, and Latin American economic crises of the late 1990s. Having read the book while flying back and forth [...]
Talking about the Economy at Milken
Posted in Budget, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, Economy on April 27, 2010 | 1 Comment »
This morning I participated in a panel discussion at the Milken Global Conference about the state of the economy. Here’s the video. Fellow panelists were: Ron Bloom, Senior Advisor, U.S. Treasury Department; White House Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy John Engler, President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers Michael McCallister, President and CEO, Humana Inc. David [...]
A Useful Primer on Derivatives Regulation
Posted in Finance, Regulation, tagged Derivatives, Finance, Regulation on April 23, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Bob Litan of the Brookings Institution recently penned an excellent overview of the issues surrounding derivatives regulation, with a particular focus on credit default swaps (CDS). ”The Derivative Dealers’ Club and Derivatives Markets Reform: A Guide for Policy Makers, and Other Interested Parties,” is really two pieces in one: a primer on derivatives policy and a [...]
Financial Literacy and the Subprime Crisis
Posted in Finance, Microeconomics, tagged Behavioral Economics, Consumers, Finance, Mortgage on April 22, 2010 | 5 Comments »
A new working paper from the Atlanta Fed identifies a key reason why some subprime mortgage borrowers have defaulted and some haven’t: differences in numerical ability (ht: Torsten S.). In “Financial Literacy and Subprime Mortgage Delinquency,” Kristopher Gerardi, Lorenz Goette, and Stephan Meier examine how the financial literacy of individual subprime borrowers (as measured through [...]
An Unusual Battle Between Amazon and Publishers
Posted in Internet, Microeconomics, tagged Amazon, Apple, Google, Internet on April 21, 2010 | 13 Comments »
Over at the New Yorker, Ken Auletta has a fascinating piece about the future of publishing as the book world goes digital. Highly recommended if you a Kindle lover, an iPad enthusiast, or a Google watcher (or, like me, all three). The article also describes an unusual battle between book publishers and Amazon about the [...]
How Did Treasury Vote Its Citigroup Shares?
Posted in Finance, Politics, tagged Citigroup, Finance, TARP on April 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The United States Treasury is Citigroup’s largest common shareholder, owning 7.7 billion shares, or about 27% of the company. Which raised an interesting issue at today’s annual meeting: how should the Treasury vote its shares? Treasury answered as follows: As we have previously stated, Treasury is a reluctant shareholder in private companies and intends to dispose [...]
Web Coupons, Privacy, and Price Discrimination
Posted in Internet, Microeconomics, tagged Internet, Microeconomics, Pricing, Privacy on April 17, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Suppose you’ve got a successful business, selling your product to a diverse set of customers. Life is good. But you’d like to increase profits even more. What should you do? One option from the MBA playbook (among many) is to think creatively about your pricing. Maybe there’s a way to distinguish your customers from each [...]
Single Family Construction Still Flat
Posted in Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on April 16, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Today’s housing data are driving some optimistic headlines about the 1.6% increase in housing starts in March and the upward revisions to February data. Looking a bit deeper, however, one finds that single-family starts actually fell in March; all of the gain came in multi-family units. As I’ve noted in previous posts (here, for example), [...]
The Second Rule of Hospitals
Posted in Health, tagged Health, Same-Sex Marriage on April 16, 2010 | 6 Comments »
The first rule of hospitals is to try to stay out of them. Unfortunately, that rule must sometimes be broken. So let me suggest a second rule: no one should be alone in a hospital. Hospitals can work miracles, saving lives and improving quality of life. But they can still be dangerous and (ironically) inhospitable [...]
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