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Capacity Utilization and Inflation: Why the Fed's Model Is Flawed

The Fed has eased massively and not only have prices declined or remained stable but bond market expectations for future inflation are phenomenally low. If this recession doesn't shake monetarists out of their phastasms, nothing will.

Krugman Misreads Data Proving Paradox of Thrift

You clearly do not understand the paradox of thrift. It states: the economy turns bad, and the savings rate goes up. If people save, then there is no basis for recovery in a consumption-driven economy.

That's what the graph shows. That's your big "a-ha"--that without the government, saving has gone up. And that's the entire point of counter-cyclical government spending.

California's IOUs: Unintended Consequences of TARP Mentality

Only problem with your title is California has done this twice before.

There's Still No Household Debt Crisis

What flawed logic!

By looking at payments, you ignore all those who are unable to make payments.

But that is precisely the debt crisis. Trillions of debt will go unpaid, millions of households going bankrupt, lots of foreclosures. But you take them out of the denominator.

Meanwhile, those who are measured by your numbers will be scared to spend and take on future obligations, knowing they too might be on the razor's edge. That's why the savings rate is increasing.

Once an Inflationist, Always an Inflationist

Yes indeed, folks, look in your "gut" and you will find the the truthiness that debt is bad bad bad!

Behind Krugman's Stance on Inflation

Your the sophist my friend. Vague allusions to unspecified costs versus hard empirical data from similar situations.

Maybe the Fed Isn't Really Printing Money Like a Drunken Sailor

It's funny how many wingnuts on this site won't even consider the possibility that experts have any idea what they are doing. I'm not saying the Fed and Paul Krugman are necessarily right, or right all the time, but, uh, it's worth considering they might be. The article proposes "maybe" it's not so bad. The reactionaries and crackpot fundamentalists come over here and say "no way," and in so doing many reveal themselves to have absolutely no understanding of how an economy and a credit system function.

Household Net Worth Still Almost 20% Higher than in 1999

Let's see, would it be cynical of me to suggest that what this implies is household net worth has at least 20% more to fall? Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" comments were in December 1996. That's my baseline for where the economy will fall to.

Beige Book Blues

Amen, and also to Jeff on the downward revision cycle with one caveat. The nature of modeling is that it is just a quantitative way to make guesses, and those guesses are based on what we are used to. The models are not prepared for sharp drops, hence they underestimate their severity and correct downward month after month. You don't need a conspiracy theory, in other words. It's built in to the models.

More Data, More Quantatatively Inspired Hope Today - But Will It Last?

"the trend can't be denied"

Here's two entirely data-bound denials: a)the 4 week moving average trended up this week with upward revisions for prior weeks and one "good" week dropping out, and that is the more accurate measure. b)the last dip in the graph before the claimed "peak" was deeper--and then job loss resumed it's upward trend. How do you know that we're not in a holding pattern before heading higher rather than at a cyclical peak? You don't.

Businesses are being told recovery is coming next quarter, so they are holding on to people they would like to keep. But so far the only indication that recovery is coming is that stocks have gone up. Incomes, spending, and orders tell a different story, none having turned POSITIVE rather than less negative.

This Government Can't Be Serious

The reason for the Latvian debacle is that the IMF is demanding devaluation, government officials are talking like it's a done deal. Who's going to buy bonds that are going to be devalued by 15 to 30% very shortly, without knowing the exact amount?

Not the Great Depression 2.0

If 1929 is the benchmark, then today we must compare to 1930! True, we have not shoehorned 10 years of downturn into 1. But that doesn't tell us what will happen in the next 9 years.

Brave Home Buyers and Other Consumers

It's speculators buying houses, not conusmers.

U.S. Hyperinflation: Is Faber's Prediction Realistic?

It's not the flation that hurts, it's the stag part.

Weimar wasn't so bad...compared to the deflation that brought the Nazi's to power.

Is Case-Shiller Right That Housing Hasn't Hit Bottom?

Population? Look, if you lose your job, you move in with your mother or brother, or your kids don't move out, or you stay in a share instead of getting your own place. Number of occupants per household has been dropping forever, but it doesn't have to.