The CPI, and Some Key Components

Deficit Hypocrisy Watch The WSJ editorial page last Thursday remarked upon: "...the worst fiscal record of any President in modern times..." Indeed, there has been a point in time when the Federal budget deficit, adjusted for how tax revenues and transfers responds to the state of the economy (what students in my undergraduate course are learning are called “automatic stabilizers”), hit a then record 4.4% as a share of potential GD

I thought it useful to take a look at a few retrospective macro indicators pertaining the December 2010, three years after the beginning of what some term "the Great Recession".

Don't expect a big impact on gasoline prices from opening up an oil pipeline to the coast. I am a little late to this debate [0] [1] [2], but I wanted to highlight something that is clear from basic international trade theory. Opening up to international trade changes relative prices, and in fact raises some prices.

So says David Malpass in the WSJ: Data released this week by the Commerce Department waved bright red recession flags—orders for durable goods fell 13.2% in August and inflation-adjusted personal income fell 0.3%. ...

Joseph Lawler at the Spectator distills the Austrian perspective on the sources of current unemployment. Economists of a statist or Keynesian bent tend to posit that modern managers are quicker to fire employees and squeeze extra productivity out of their remaining workers, and then explore why that might be so. ...

That was the title of the Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show, with Kerri Miller.

David Henderson writes in his "Reply to DeLong": In the 1981-82 recession, the fall in real wages helped end the recession. I don't see it in BLS series Nonfarm Business Sector: Real Compensation Per Hour.

WASHINGTON – U.S. consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, pointing to muted inflation pressures that should allow the Federal Reserve to stay on its ultra-easy monetary policy path as it nurses the economy back to health. The Labor Department said on Friday its Consumer Price Index dropped 0.3% last month as a sharp decline in gasoline prices offset increases in other areas. It was also the largest drop since May and followed a 0.1% gain in October. Economists polled by Reuters had expected consumer prices to fall 0.2%.