Econbrowser

Jeremy Kunn has a great blog on distilling complex math ideas to primers anyone can understand. https://jeremykun.com/ Analysis of current economic conditions and policy: http://econbrowser.com/

> The reason scientists don't blog a lot, or comment on blogs, is that... So, now that I've read the comments on a few of these open-access type articles, it seems like there is so much variation among academic disciplines that broad statements about "scientists" are untrue in many cases and probably isn't a helpful way to phase things. This statement is not true in every field: in Economics (my field, you can decide whether or not we are "scientists," but we certainly try to publish in peer-reviewed journals) there are many blogs by extremely accomplished and prominent Economists. They get a lot of informal but meaningful credit for it, in some cases much more than another top publication would bring (when you go from zero to one or one to two top-tier articles, it affects your career. When you go from 31 to 32, not so much). Just for specifics: Jim Hamilton at UCSD (my alma mater) started and contributes to the blog http://www.econbrowser.com. His graduate students started landing order-of-magnitude better jobs and interviews once the blog was established (and, just to make clear that it's not sour grapes on my part since most of them are my friends: these are jobs that the students are quite well qualified for; I think previous students if anything got too little exposure). It's a great blog that's really well regarded among Economists, and everyone I've asked thinks that the blog is bringing him a lot of (IMO deserved) attention. > This de-prioritization of peer…

Not as much content as HN, but I go here once in a while https://econbrowser.com/

https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ https://econbrowser.com/

I'll admit, I didn't even click on your link, but rather went by your claimed range: > Government stated inflation based on chained CPI and other new measures to reduce inflation may be at around 2%, but previous formulas used in the past to calculate inflation would show a much higher rate (6-10%) I'm not here to quibble about inflation ranges, but to point out how idiotic their 'methodology' is. Don't take my word for it; James Hamilton (CV: http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~jhamilton/) - http://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb Greenlees and McClelland (Who actually designed the CPI methodology) - http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf Or my favorite, via the libertarian blogger James Parsons. If you actually use Shadowstat's inflation ranges, you can 'back-calculate' the price of assets to show how insane they actually are: * If shadow stats inflation assertions are correct, the 'real' value of housing has dropped 60% since 1980! [1] - http://blog.jparsons.net/2011/03/shadow-stats-debunked-part-i.html

Most of these points are highly debatable. I don't have time for all of them, but taking a couple... Re: #3 -- I assume you'd prefer the gold standard. Most (non-Austrian) economists believe that the gold standard actually exacerbated the great depression. I simply would recommend readers read the entire wikipedia article including the section on disadvantages. Or read this: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2005/12/the_gold_standa.html Re: #6 -- your claim that lax crime policies were primarily responsible for the rise in crime. Evidence is actually that it was mostly demographics -- a rise in crime prone young men -- combined with the rise of drugs like cocaine, crack, etc... And there's little evidence that "tougher" and longer sentences do any good. Re: #8 -- Democracy promotion abroad isn't necessarily a progressive idea. After all, our recent experiment in democracy promotion in Iraq is the brainchild of neoconservatives.

> Deflation (or at least reduced inflation) means reduced interest rates. If it was "just" a slow down, maybe interest rates were lower, but during times of uncertainly lending is risky and so higher return is asked for that risk. The historical records shows that interest rates spiked during major economic events (of which there were more off, more often, and tended to last longer): * https://econbrowser.com/archives/2012/02/why_not_abolish * https://econbrowser.com/archives/2012/09/the_gold_standa_1

I might have missed something here "current dollar valuations are more appropriate. Nominal GDP measured in these units are plotted in Figure 2." https://econbrowser.com/archives/2009/06/how_important_i_2#:~:text=cur… (What do those bumps correspond to?)

The whole “measure it the way they used to” meme implies that you believe in the website shadow stats. Well you might want to know that shadow stats doesn’t actually recalculate inflation using old methodology, it adds some constant factors. https://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/10/shadowstats_res

I can't believe people are still citing shadowstats and expecting to be taken seriously. It's been known bullshit for a decade and a half. https://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb

Just creating money doesn't necessarily mean much: > But this is what so much of the money supply represents – money that has been issued and is just sitting around unused. Why is this useful? It’s like calculating your weight changes by counting how much food you have in your refrigerator. No. That’s potential calories consumed and potential weight gain. The amount of food in your fridge tells you little about your future weight changes just like the amount of money in the economy tells us little about the actual price changes in the economy. * https://www.pragcap.com/three-things-i-think-i-think-i-see-dead-mutual… It actually has to be used, which it generally has not been: * https://econbrowser.com/archives/2021/11/so-you-want-to-be-a-monetaris… * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

These numbers don’t seem plausible. Compared to nominal GDP statistics, they would imply negative real growth since 1980. This is incompatible with some periods of low unemployment that occurred since 1980 (eg. the late 90s). It implies that the US has constantly been in a recession for decades. Also conflicts with other hard-to fake stats like increased power generation and freight shipping since 1980. Edit: found this quote from the creator of Shadowstats that they don’t actually calculate their own inflation numbers, but instead add a fudge factor to the official numbers. http://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/10/shadowstats_res

Context is important because the number of true facts we can spout about the economy of Kansas is legion and its highly likely a propaganda shop has cherry picked the ones they deliver. Sadly, OPs linked claims don't tell us anything about Kansas' performance under these tax cuts which is really what matters since the point of the tax cuts was to supercharge growth. Did that happen? I'm going to say no: http://econbrowser.com/archives/2016/10/the-kansas-economy-three-pictu… http://econbrowser.com/archives/2016/12/trends-in-kansas-gdp Predictive value of conservative "freedom" rankings: http://econbrowser.com/archives/2015/07/the-information-content-of-the… Commentary on Kansas budget by former Kansas Republican Budget Director (former for both): http://www.kansasbudget.com/

Please change the title as this is about the $100 note. The "Benjamins" make up 76% of the US currency in circulation: http://econbrowser.com/archives/2013/04/who_is_holding Summers can say that this is all about criminals and tax evaders, but everyone should remember that if the government and fed want to impose negative interest rates on individual's savings then they have to eliminate cash or use some other unsavory techniques. This is a first step in that direction.

I believe its U3 and U6 numbers. Came across an interesting article[0] about how they are measuring these along with some historical data. It touches on underemployment as well, indicating that the underemployed are included in the U6 numbers. The articles most recent(2015-06) monthly U3 rate of 5.3% is about half of the U6 rate of 10.5% for the same period. [0] http://econbrowser.com/archives/2015/07/measuring-unemployment

The underlying data source of Shadowstats is a combination of the official numbers and a constant extracted from the source that is underlying all of us when we sit down. http://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/10/shadowstats_res

Um, thats a misreading of the old Bloomberg report that invented the $7.7 trillion figure. Actual loans appear on the Fed balance sheet. The Fed offered 7.7 trillion in loan guarantees over a period of time, many of which were quickly wound down, which is a very different matter. The Fed currently has a balance sheet of $2.8T: 1.6T is government loans, about 1T are mortgage backed securities from the 2008 crisis. See http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/no-the-fed-did-not-han… and http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/12/777_trillion_in.html

Some might argue that won't always be a possibility, assuming it even is right now. http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/05/northern_ghawar.html

For a contrary view, see the facts: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/02/assessing-the-stimulus.html and: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2010/02/assessing_the_s.html

here is a nice view of the 'gdp per square kilometer' for the world: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/01/the_distributio.html It is a very good indicator of infrastructure and standard of living.

Thanks. I suppose you have read this: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb.html

Here's both real average hourly (red) and median weekly (blue) wages: https://econbrowser.com/archives/2021/08/yet-more-alternative-real-wag… Helps to show that it's not an effect dominated by the very rich, and thus throwing off the average, and also that it's not that hourly wages have stagnated but people work more hours -- since they're broadly similar, we should feel strongly that it is a real increase in "normal people's" actual wages. There are more data available if people want to look for it. This is a surprisingly complex subject for something that initially sounds simple, so it helps to get a few different views into it, but the upshot is: since the teens, people have been paid more. EDIT to add: People are just slow to update on this. If you look at the world in 2014, then it seems a lot more reasonable to be skeptical that normal people will ever get a raise. Then, you'd had basically 15 year of stagnation, before that a little rise, and then more years of stagnation at a lower level.

I don't think it is as near or going to be as bad as some people think, but with caveats. Listening to the guy who the big short was based on now, my main takeaway is that the banks deleveraged significantly since 07/08, down to ~11 vs ~30 then. Of course, part of the problem is they were using financial tricks to cover up bad assets... so I think they might be more leveraged than they are letting on. Second, the legislation afterwards only really did one thing: make the "fix", aka fed bailout, automatic. This means there should be less time between drop and recovery. At the same time, it creates incentive for bankers to be more reckless. Politically, midterms are always about the economy at heart. If Trump is serving Wall Street well enough they will try to keep him propped up for 2020, and would probably try to delay the big dip till either right after or till 2023/24. https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/06/recession-anxieties-june-2019 https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/rosenberg-on-lagged-effects-of-fed…

Trillion dollar coin or no coin, the debt ceiling attempts to regulate (in part) expenditures already authorized by Congress and signed into law. It's a tempest in a teapot for one party in Congress to argue that it's irresponsible to conduct authorized expenditures, because in fact, Congress did authorize the expenditures. The two transactions, debt providing cash to the government, and seigniorage (difference in value from the metal in the coin and the fiat value asserted) providing cash to the government for the coin issuance are approximately equally inflationary, over time, assuming that the debt remains outstanding. If such a coin were undertaken, in all probability, it would be repurchased by the Treasury and retired, and debt would be issued. Indeed, the a return of the coin to the Treasury could be via issuance of debt directly to the Federal Reserve. A little perspective on Federal Reserve Bank's process to create cash: Federal Reserve Balance Sheet - by James Hamilton on Econobrowser http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/12/federal_reserve_1.html

Shadows stats has faced some criticism https://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb Some wags have pointed out the price has been constant for many years https://web.archive.org/web/20080512223437/http://www.shadowstats.com/… The billion prices project independently collects prices and matches CPI well https://www.businessinsider.com/million-prices-project-vs-the-cpi-2012… Note that the inflation stats in Argentina *were* manipulated and official numbers differed from billion prices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project

Your thinking Saudi Arabia UNILATERALLY caused the oil glut. IF that were the case, Saudi Arabia would be more powerful than OPEC, etc. They are not. The thing is most of the world's oil producers were pumping oil at ever increasing quantities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Top_Oil_Producing_Counties.png As oil prices went down, they had to pump MORE to maintain operating costs. http://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/us_oil_jan_16.png http://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/crude_oil_stocks_jan… http://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/saudi_prod_jan_16.pn… http://econbrowser.com/archives/2016/01/world-oil-supply-and-demand

> https://www.shadowstats.com/ No. Just No. First off the math makes absolutely no sense: > But if we take away the outlier 2020 data points, the average real annual GDP growth from 2010-2019 was 2.3%. The inflation rate in that time averaged roughly 1.8% per year. > If you’re one of the conspiracy people who believe inflation has actually been running at 5-6% per year, that would assume the economy has been contracting by 1-3% per year over the past 10 years. > And if you’re a full tinfoil hat person who assumes inflation is actually 10-12% per year[2], that’s like saying we’ve been in a full-blown depression and the economy has lost 80% of its value. * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/01/inflation-truthers/ Second, the methodology is all wrong: * https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-1… As much as you can call it a "methodology" of taking the official CPI number and adding your own, which the author of the site admits to: > I’m not going back and recalculating the CPI. All I’m doing is going back to the government’s estimates of what the effect would be and using that as an add factor to the reported statistics. * http://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/10/shadowstats_res * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com#Negative Further, the current price of a subscription to the 'full report' is $175/year right now, the same as it was in 2014: *…