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Showing posts with the label Macro

Ip on Bidenomics

Greg Ip has a great column in the WSJ on Bidenomics.   It's not long, it's so well written that it's hard to condense the good parts, and you should really read it all.  There is an intellectual framework to Bidenomics, and with that a scarily more durable move on economic policy.  There used to be  "certain rules about how the world worked: governments should avoid deficits, liberalize trade and trust in markets. Taxes and social programs shouldn’t discourage work." By contrast President Biden's (really his team's) "embrace of bigger government" is founded on different economic ideas. To wit, abridged:  Growth Old view: Scarcity is the default condition of economies: the demand for goods, services, labor and capital is limitless, their supply is limited. ...faster growth requires raising potential by increasing incentives to work and invest. Macroeconomic tools—monetary and fiscal policy—are only occasionally needed to deal with recessions and i...

Inflation outlook at NRO. 1970s all over again?

Essay on monetary policy in National Review Online .  Short version: The Fed's monetary policy has returned to the intellectual framework of the late 1960s. At best "expectations" now float around as an independent force, manipulable by speeches, but not tied to patterns of action by the Fed as analysis since the 1980s would require.  If you follow the conventional reading of how monetary policy works, that observation leads to a natural prediction:  we're on the verge of reliving 1970s inflation. (Fiscal policy, entitlements, regulation and cities seem to be headed also to 1970s policy on steroids.)  True, the Fed says "we have the tools" to stop inflation should it break out. But that tool is to rerun 1980. Does the Fed have the will? Will the Fed really induce a 2 year agonizing recession to bring down inflation, followed by 15 years of historically unprecedented high interest rates? Or will the Fed do what it did three times before that -- half-hearted i...