The Slack Wire
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Josh Mason, an Assistant Professor of Economics at City University of New York, blogs at The Slack Wire. This economics blog primarily revolves around macroeconomics issues and economic history, which Josh captures extremely well. He does an excellent job of analyzing economic news.
The Slack Wire
1w ago
(I write a monthlyish opinion piece for Barron’s. This one was published there in September. My previous pieces are here.) A lingering puzzle about inflation is why the public still seems so unhappy about it, even though it has, by conventional measures, returned to normal. One explanation is that people are simply confused, or misled by the media. But ..read more
The Slack Wire
1w ago
In recent days, there has been a good deal of discussion in the business press and on economics Bluesky about the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s “nowcast” of GDP for the first quarter of 2025. The suggestion is that the US may already be entering a recession. The first quarter of 2025 is, of course, ongoing ..read more
The Slack Wire
3w ago
(This is the text of a talk I gave for a workshop organized by the International Network for Democratic Economic Planning. Once video from the workshop is available, I will post it here.) The starting point for this conversation, it seems to me, is that planning is everywhere in the economy we already live in ..read more
The Slack Wire
1M ago
This is a guest post by Michael Kinnucan. His focus here is on third-party proposals, but the argument is also relevant for proposals (like this or this) for the Democrats to move toward a membership model. — JWM Political Parties are Illegal in the US A longstanding concern on the US electoral left is the ..read more
The Slack Wire
1M ago
Policy writing is a particular kind of writing. It’s defined not just by its topic but by its orientation: What should government do, to address some agreed-on problem, or achieve some agreed-on goal? It is premised on a public debate, in which ideas are adopted based on their merits. It is addressed to no one ..read more
The Slack Wire
2M ago
(I am an occasional contributor to roundtables of economists in the magazine The International Economy. The topic of this month’s roundtable was: Is a serious global debt crisis possible?) As Hyman Minsky famously described, when market participants believe that crises are possible, they behave in ways that make the system relatively robust. Only when the chance of ..read more
The Slack Wire
2M ago
(I write a monthlyish opinion piece for Barron’s. This one was published there in June. My previous pieces are here.) Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Ever since President Ronald Reagan first asked that question in 1980, it has summed up a decisive factor in national politics. Those presidents who deliver material improvement in ..read more
The Slack Wire
5M ago
(I write occasional opinion pieces for Barron’s. This one was published there in October 2024. My previous pieces are here.) Not long ago, there was widespread agreement on how to think about monetary policy. When the Federal Reserve hikes, this story went, it makes credit more expensive, reducing spending on new housing and other forms of capital expenditure ..read more
The Slack Wire
6M ago
(This piece was published in the Fall 2024 issue of Dissent.) In the first two years after Biden’s election, there was considerable enthusiasm on the left for the administration’s embrace of a larger, more active economic role for the federal government. I was among those who saw both the ambitions of the Build Back Better bill ..read more
The Slack Wire
6M ago
(I am an occasional contributor to roundtables of economists in the magazine The International Economy. This month’s roundtable was on concerns that ultra-low interest rates after the 2007-2009 financial crisis contributed to rising inequality and asset bubbles, and asked contributors to grade post-2007 monetary policy on a scale of A to F.) Overall, I give the negative ..read more