One can't help but wonder if the the lack of agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties over the proposed extension of the US debt ceiling is anything more than grand political theatre, although this time it appears to be a different ball-game with the growing role and influence of the "tea-party" members. Perhaps more telling is the role of…
Tag Archives Global Financial Crisis – GFC
Labour market. The unemployment numbers yesterday were again remarkably good relative to what is happening elsewhere in the world. The headline u/e rate is up to 5.8%. Since July last year we’ve lost about 160,000 full time jobs, but part time jobs are up about 127,000. Of course we need to create jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising,…
Facts versus faith. Joshua Gans - I was asked to write an opinion piece about Kevin Rudd’s essay in The Monthly on the GFC which, by the way, should stand for Great Fracking Complacency. It is in today’s Age and my opinion and disappointment speaks for itself. (Others seem more willing to carry ideological baggage than I am). Forget ideology…
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street. A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions…
Joshua Gans: The RBA Board meets tomorrow for the first time in 2009. As I argued last week, in my view the RBA ought to be cutting far more aggressively, and there is no reason not to use most or all of the ammunition they have available - cutting interest rates to 2% or below. There is no inflation risk,…
Crisis wipes $115b from Govt revenue. The global financial crisis has slashed a massive $115 billion from Government revenues over the next four years, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has revealed. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]
'Buy American' Rider Sparks Trade Debate . The stimulus bill passed by the House last night contains a controversial provision that would mostly bar foreign steel and iron from the infrastructure projects laid out by the $819 billion economic package. [washingtonpost.com - Business]
Joshua Gans on Paul Krugman's "The return of Depression Economics". Well I finished the revised edition of Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics. He wrote the original almost 10 years ago with much the same theme: that we have not solved the boom and bust cycle and risk of prolonged recession and even depression remains. He deserves kudos for…
The failure of unregulated markets. [HT: Simon Johnson] MIT’s Daron Acemoglu has written one of the best essays on the financial crisis and what it means for economics that I have read. He argues, convincingly, that forgetting about what drives economic growth when formulating policy is a big mistake. Importantly, it has been all too easy to forget about how…
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