Economics

During this credit crisis, you keep hearing talking heads act as if deflation is the worst thing that could hit an economy. Just a few years ago we kept hearing people talking about inflation as if it were the thing to avoid. Now suddenly,…

There has been a lot of speculation about what the Federal Reserve will or will not do regarding quantitative easing (QE) in order to boost the economy. With the Obama administration constrained regarding fiscal policy, attention has turned…

As is often the case, the genesis of this post is a conversation initiated by Edward (Harrison) on the question of why we aren’t using monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand. That question was posed here by Tyler Cowen at Marginal…

David Stockman was Ronald Reagan's first Budget Director. He left the political world for things like Private Equity. Lately, he has been making headlines for his statements regarding the economy and fiscal matters. He says "In some…

Kay-Yut Chen and Marina Krakovsky have earned their colours as behavioural economists at Hewlett Packard in the HP Labs and in in their new book Secrets of the Moneylab  they present the gist of their research over the past 20 years.…

When people talk about the recent sovereign debt crisis they make a lot of sweeping statements about debt and currency which allow them to make false analogies. This does us all a disservice because it creates a false impression about the…

“I am deeply ashamed to know that I won't be able to pay our staff. They have got mortgages, children. What am I supposed to do?" Jesus Manuel Ampero, Mayor of Cenicientos (Spain) It has been an unpredictable summer. Investors…

by Claus Vistesen (with apologies to Frederick Goodall) The financial and economic discourse is a funny beast really; it can, if harnessed properly, shed light on future investor and market performance, it can give a diversified and…

My friend Rob Parenteau says "most professional investors are high frequency macro data and short run asset price driven."  He basically means they have no real macro analytical framework to use when making investment…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Inflation versus deflation discussions are the rule for columnists,…