During the 2010s, Jim Bullard was probably my favorite Federal Reserve bank president. David Beckworth has an interview with Bullard, in which he makes a number of insightful observations. As usual, I’ll focus on an area where I seem to spot a difference of opinion: Bullard: So, the mentality at the time [2020] was, still, that ..read more

Back in 2010, I predicted that India would have the world’s largest economy (in PPP terms) within 100 years. A few months later, I moved up the predicted date to 2081. Based on this graph, I’d now say some time in the 2060s: Today, India and China both have a bit over 1.4 billion people ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn This tweet caught my eye: If Biden had been nominated, I guarantee that this example would have been cited by anti-EMH types. “Markets were giving a 20% chance that someone else would be nominated, when it was obvious that Biden had things wrapped up.” The market is smarter than you think. PS. A few comments on Harris: I often see right wingers making two points: 1. DEI programs that promote the unqualified are bad. 2. Problem X occurred in a system that had hired women and blacks, and hence DEI is to blame for problem X. The first claim is true, while the second is ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn [I’ve received complaints that I don’t do enough posts on monetary policy. I have a long one over at Econlog with zero comments, while my moronic Trump posts get dozens of comments.] 1. Here’s Janan Ganesh: Because, in Britain, someone who is nationalist in general will be anti-EU in particular, the Anglo-American intelligentsia tends to assume the same of Europeans. In fact, millions are able to decouple the two things. Brexit helped. If Nato owes its second life to Russia, the EU is forever in Britain’s debt. Its great adventure of 2016 has gone badly enough to di ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Remember the “Nixon to China” meme? The basic idea is that under our system of governance, major shifts in policy require buy-in from the faction that is traditionally hostile to the idea. There are too many checks and balances to ram through a momentous change without support from the opposition party. If you compare the American fiscal regime with the fiscal policies of most European countries, you’ll notice many similarities, but also a few key differences: 1. Both feature big government, but government in Europe is usually at least 10% of GDP larger than in the US ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Trump has done so many awful things that it’s hard to single out any one example. But for my money, picking Vance as his VP is his single worst decision. Vance is my least favorite US senator. Picking Vance confirms what I already suspected. The traditional Republican Party is dead—it’s officially the party of nationalism from now on. PS. Here’s Politico: “I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016, a clip used in both the new ads. “I never liked him.” Both ads also feature a screenshot of a Vance tweet from October 2016. “My god wh ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn On September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford, but was stopped by a Secret service agent as she was pulling the trigger. On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore, shot at Ford and missed his head by a few inches. Neither of these assassination attempts were major news stories, at least to the extent you might expect. Both events were quickly forgotten, and did not impact the upcoming campaign for president. They occurred during a time of very low intensity in politics, and (perhaps more importantly) during a period of much worse p ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tyler Cowen directed me to a Greg Mankiw essay on inflation: And as a textbook author, I sometimes get the suggestion that the whole discussion of the Phillips curve be removed from my books on the grounds that the idea is hopelessly out-of-date. By contrast, my own thinking is closer to that of George Akerlof (2002), who in his Nobel prize lecture called the Phillips curve “probably the single most important macroeconomic relationship.” I have a hypothesis about the source of this disconnect. In the original paper by Phillips (1958) and the famous follow-up by Samue ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn There are times when it’s cruel to be kind. At some point in the not too distant future, the quality of my blogging will drop below a certain threshold. (Maybe it already has.) At that point, I hope my best commenters will tell me so. You won’t be doing me any favors by hiding my senility from me—it would merely cause me to suffer even more from the indignities of old age, and to lose whatever meager reputation I might have once had. I see reports that top Dems are suggesting that conversations about Biden’s obvious incapacity to govern be kept private. Maybe that w ..read more

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 1. Does Elon wish to kill me? All legal American residents should be allowed to vote. 2. This is our relatively sane candidate: And you guys scoff when I say America’s become a banana republic. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn ..read more