Over at the Kauffman Foundation, Tim Kane has released his latest quarterly survey of economic bloggers. Here’s the usual word cloud reflecting the adjectives (up to five per respondent) that we econobloggers offered up to describe the U.S. economy: That’s much better than last quarter, when you needed a magnifying glass to find any optimistic [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Economy’
The U.S. Economy is Uncertain, Fragile, and … Growing
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Haiku, Uncertainty on February 1, 2012 | 8 Comments »
The U.S. Economy is Weak, Uncertain, and Fragile
Posted in Economy, Energy, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on October 31, 2011 | 5 Comments »
At least according to the latest Kauffman survey of economics bloggers by Tim Kane. Here’s the word cloud of responses when the bloggers (including me) were asked for up to five adjectives to describe the U.S. economy in Q4 2011: Comparing this to the last survey in July, the good news is that “vulnerable” has gotten smaller. The [...]
Regulatory Uncertainty and Our Weak Economy
Posted in Economy, Regulation, tagged Economy, Regulation, Uncertainty on September 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Over at the Economist’s Free Exchange blog, Grep Ip offers an excellent, balanced analysis of regulatory uncertainty and our weak economy. Here’s a short excerpt: How much of our economic malaise can be blamed on regulatory uncertainty? Conservatives argue that a wave of Obama administration regulations and the threat of more to come are the [...]
Economy is Worse Than We Knew; Uncertainty Still Reigns
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on July 29, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). In light of today’s abysmal GDP report, the results for one question are particularly relevant: The latest revisions shows that GDP growth in recent quarters was much [...]
How Ambitious is Pawlenty’s Growth Goal?
Posted in Economy, Politics, tagged Economy, GDP, Politics on June 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Plenty. In his economic speech on Tuesday, presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty set out an ambitious goal for economic growth: Let’s grow the economy by 5%, instead of the anemic 2% currently envisioned. Such a national economic growth target will set our sights on a positive future. And inspire the actions needed to reach it. By [...]
Uncertainty Still Reigns in the Latest Blogger Word Cloud
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on May 9, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). My favorite feature is a word cloud of adjective that respondents offered to an open-ended question about the U.S. economy: Uncertainty still reigns (as it should), but ”recovering”, “improving”, and [...]
A Tepid Quarter for GDP
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, Economy, GDP on April 28, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Thursday morning brought the first official look at GDP growth in the first quarter. Headline growth was a disappointing, if not surprising, 1.8%. Here’s my usual graph of how various components of the economy contributed to overall growth: Consumers continued to spend at a moderate pace; their spending grew at a 2.7% rate, thus adding [...]
Developing the Competitiveness Agenda
Posted in Economy, Uncategorized, tagged Economy on February 24, 2011 | 1 Comment »
On Friday I will be speaking at an event sponsored by Hamilton Place Strategies. It came together on short notice, so let me give it a plug: Developing the Competitiveness Agenda This week’s first meeting of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness kicked off a national debate on the economic policies encouraging greater job creation and [...]
How is Housing Affecting Inflation? An Update
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Housing, Inflation, Macroeconomics on February 20, 2011 | 3 Comments »
A few months ago, I argued that housing was messing up inflation measures, in particular the core CPI. With last week’s release of fresh CPI data, I decided to check in to see if that’s still true. Answer: Yes, but less so. The cost of housing is still rising slower than for other core goods [...]
Is Housing Messing Up Inflation Measures? Yes, But …
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Federal Reserve, Housing, Inflation, Macroeconomics, Money on November 28, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Here’s the simplest argument in favor of the Fed’s decision to restart quantitative easing: The economy remains very weak. Unemployment, for example, is still almost 10%, and the underemployment rate is close to 17%. Key inflation measures are exceptionally low. The core consumer price index (CPI), for example, is up only 0.6% over the past [...]


