Will it matter when the Fed has “traction?”
People have made all sorts of arguments against “monetary offset,” but there’s only one that actually makes much sense. The argument is that the Fed...
Author : TheMoneyIllusion
Svensson, vindicated.
I once read a book where Richard Rorty debated another philosopher on the nature of “truth.” Rorty claimed something to the effect that; “Truth was...
Matt Yglesias’ recent posts
Why do I like Matt Yglesias’s posts? Consider 5 done in the past few days: Car dealers are awful. It’s time to kill the dumb...
Bayesian updating
Here are some interesting articles that I ran across. First one from the Economist on the real (actual) minimum wage—zero: Perhaps not coincidentally, the number of unpaid...
The problem with procyclical inflation
Here’s Charles Evans in the WSJ: “We’ve averaged well under that 2% mark for the past six-and-a-half years,” Mr. Evans said. “With a symmetric inflation...
Did QE worsen inequality? That’s not even a question
When people ask whether QE worsened inequality they think they are asking a coherent question. But that merely shows how poorly most people understand monetary...
The Fed finally says “enough”
It would be interesting to know what Fed people like Bernanke and Yellen privately think of the ECB. Here’s an interesting story on Draghi (who...
The real problem with Fed policy
Five year TIPS spreads are at 1.5%. Because the Fed targets PCE inflation, and because 2.0% PCE inflation is roughly equivalent to 2.4% CPI inflation,...
Another NGDP futures market
Things are progressing quite nicely with iPredict, and I hope to be able to ask donors to send their checks out within a couple of...
Are the doves dishonest?
During the 1970s, the doves were consistently wrong, and for the most part denied they were wrong, even after the fact. Inflation (they said) was...