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Financial Crisis and the Real Economy
One of the biggest questions about the financial crisis – one heard from Capitol Hill to radio talk shows to casual conversations with friends – is why it matters for ordinary people. One major reason...
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Your Money Is Not Going to Go Poof
Readers of this blog will already know that we believe that (a) the credit crisis of the past two weeks is serious, (b) there is a real risk of a global recession, but (c) there are practical steps...
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Financial Crisis and the Real Economy, Part 2
The impact of the financial crisis on the real economy can be divided into two periods: before September 15 and after September 15. Before 9/15, it was clear that we were in an economic slowdown,...
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Banks Can Borrow Money; You, Not So Much
The TED spread is down again today to 3.20 (down from 4.64 at its peak ten days ago). This means that banks are beginning to lend money to each other, which means we are less likely to see serial bank...
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Credit Crunch: Did We Make It All Up?
There is a paper by three economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis that is getting a lot of attention on the Internet today. (How often can you write that sentence?) V.V. Chari, Lawrence...
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The Bank Lending Debate
For those who spend too much time reading economics blogs, there was a bit of a stir in the last few days over a paper by three economists at the Minneapolis Fed, which essentially said that bank...
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Should the Government Bail Out the Auto Industry?
Over in the real economy, perhaps the biggest story is the impending and highly likely merger of GM and Chrysler, in which GM would swap its 49% stake in GMAC, its consumer finance company, to Cerberus...
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An Economic Strategy for Obama
Barack Obama has been getting a mountain of unsolicated economic advice; here’s one selection. In case he needs more to read, we posted our long-term recommendations on the WSJ Real Time Economics blog...
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Silver Linings?
We got one of our last batches of economic data for this calendar year today, and there may have been a glimmer of good news in there. In the news stories about the November data, I read that personal...
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Random Observations on the GDP Announcement
By now I imagine you know that GDP contracted at an annual rate of 3.8% in Q4, beating economists’ “consensus” prediction of a 5.4% decrease. (Why do people insist on calling an average of forecasts a...
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Tracking the Household Balance Sheet
One concept that has gotten a lot of attention the last few months is the household balance sheet: the relationship between household assets and liabilities, and what that means for household behavior...
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Guest Post: A Closer Look at Industrial Policy
This guest post is by occasional contributor Ilya Podolyako, a third-year student at the Yale Law School and an executive editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. In my last post, I compared Obama’s...
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Feldstein on the Economy
What does it mean that Martin Feldstein (hat tip Mark Thoma) is now one of my favorite economists, when it comes to commenting on the current economic crisis? Feldstein’s analysis: Evidence of recovery...
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