Greg Mankiw wrote in the NYT about the puzzle of persistently low interest rates. Interest rates have been lower than ever before in history and they have been very low for decades so low interest rates seems to be the…
Blog Archives
Interest rates are low because of demographic changes and rising corporate power
Posted in Macro, Managerial Micro
Why did the stock market rise to record highs during the Covid-19 pandemic? Is it a bubble?
The timing of stock market gyrations are often hard to explain, and although the stock market crash at the beginning of the Covid pandemic is easy to understand, the dramatic rise later in the pandemic is harder to understand. Why…
Posted in Macro
I sold my stocks. I’m an economist who usually doesn’t believe in market timing, but the market looks irrationally exuberant right now.
First let’s look at the economic fundamentals right now: GDP has crashed by more than it has since the Great Depression due to a pandemic with no end in sight. Unemployment is higher than it has ever been since the…
Posted in Macro
Bush and his team were SOOO much better than Trump and his team.
Once again I find myself longing for the good old days of the George W. Bush administration which was so much more honest and competent. And they weren’t racist nor corrupt. Here is Bush’s chief economic advisor on what should…
This month may be the best time in history to look for a job!
One of the oddities of the macroeconomy is the fact that GDP falls wildly every year in the beginning of winter. That means that there is a kind of recession every winter. It isn’t an official recession because everyone expects…
Is the Fed finally thinking about Americans at the median income and below?
Most people think that the president has a lot of power over the economy, but that isn’t true. Presidents have very little direct power over the economy by law. The Fed is the only part of government that has the…
Posted in Macro
Homeownership rates and severity of financial crisis
The St. Louis Fed produced the above graph showing that nations with higher homeownership rates were hit harder by the 2007 financial crisis and are still dealing with greater aftereffects today. Nations with the most rental properties like Switzerland and…
Posted in Macro, Real Estate
Medianism 