Economic Policy

The NYT article on the release of the April CPI notes the moderate 0.2 percent rise in the rental indexes, prompting the comment from Ken Mayland, President of ClearView Economics, “The question that raises is whether the big cyclical downturn in the housing industry is finally cooling shelter costs.” This comment is a bit peculiar. […]

Arghhhhhhhhh! Come on folks, isn’t it obvious that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is in the business of selling houses? This means that when their “experts” give their assessment of the housing market, it comes with a certain bias. David Lereah, the former chief economist of the NAR has moved on to greener pastures, […]

That is not the name of Bono’s organization, but perhaps it should be. The NYT devoted an article to the Irish rock star’s complaints about “a particular crisis of credibility” among wealthy countries who have not carried though on their commitments to help poor countries. Such words are especially ironic coming from Bono. He became […]

The NYT has an article that seems to express surprise at the fact that the fall in the value of the dollar has helped to lower the size of the trade deficit. It notes that the fall in the value of dollar has helped to boost exports, commenting at one point: “Rather than hurting many […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117910010258001458.html?mod=home_whats_news_usThe Wall Street Journal reports that foreclosure rates have more than doubled between the first quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007 in Los Angeles and several other major California cities. As a result, foreclosed houses are being sold at auction for prices far below recent market levels. It would have been helpful […]

The Post headlined an article “Venezuelan Oil Losing Share of Key U.S. Market,” with the implicit suggestion that this poses a serious problem for the Venezuelan oil industry. The data in the article don’t quite fit the headline. The reason that Venezuela has lost market share over the last decade is that U.S. oil imports […]

The new data on retail sales should give us grounds for concern. The issue here is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ imputation of jobs for new firms that are not included in the survey. This imputation was was very large in April, 317,000 to be exact. Since the establishment data showed a net gain of […]

The WSJ article should be encouraging news to those who don’t know anything about the record of the experts in forecasting recessions. In the fall of 2000, not one of the Blue Chip 50 forecasters predicted the recession in the next year. In fact, in December of 2000, the average growth forecast for 2001 by […]

That’s what the NYT told readers. I am sure there are good grounds for criticizing Tony Blair’s economic record. It looks to me like the country has a serious housing bubble, the deflation of which could be very bad news for his successor and the country. But, I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t have a […]

The economics profession has produced endless studies estimating the losses from 10 percent tariffs on shoes and 15 percent tariffs on shirts. They have worked hard to ensure that all right thinking people believe that such barriers to trade are crimes against humanity. For some reason economists don’t show the same zeal in documenting the […]