Paul Krugman's Blog, page 632

Unemployment claims and employment change

New claims for unemployment insurance are one of the highest-frequency economic indicators we have - that is, the data come in early and often, giving a quicker read than things like employment numbers and unemployment rates. And there's been some celebrating over the fact that new claims seem to have peaked.
But the level of new [...:]

Shleifer, Vishny, Minsky (wonkish)

I'm on a continuing quest to develop a tractable model of Minsky moments. Why? you may ask. Why not go with verbal intuition? Well, I'm enough of a conventional economist to think that there's no substitute for a model with dotted i's and crossed t's; it's not THE TRUTH, but it really does help clarify [...:]

Stimulus history lesson

Republicans are pronouncing Obama's stimulus a failure:
"Today's announcement is an acknowledgement that the Democrats' trillion-dollar stimulus is not working, and the American people know it," House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a statement.
"When they passed this spending plan, Democrats said it would immediately create jobs, yet nearly four months later unemployment has [...:]

Me me me me I I I

Writeup of my lectures in The Economist.
Interview with Will Hutton.

Beer, beer, beer, beer

That's sunburn!
Just in case you think I'm doing nothing but parsing economic statistics while on vacation, here's a scene from Den Dyver, which serves a different specialty beer with each course. That's my dessert beer.
The red in my cheeks is sunburn from a day spent cycling. Honest.

Way off base

Mark Thoma and David Altig both react to Arthur Laffer's assertion that the increase in the monetary base presages huge inflation.
Let me add, for the 1.6 trillionth time, we are in a liquidity trap. And in such circumstances a rise in the monetary base does not lead to inflation. I had a couple [...:]

Private borrowing is still negative

Flow of funds data out today. I won't have time to do a careful analysis for a few days, but a quick check shows that the Setser point - high government borrowing is more than offset by net negative borrowing from the private sector - remains true.

In Bruges

Really. Eating moules frites, walking the (partly faux) medieval streets, thinking of Henri Pirenne.
The strolling violinist in the Markt, playing If I were a rich man - badly - did, however, somewhat undermine the mood.
PS: the old Economist line about the ultimate European - he combines British efficiency, French moral courage, Italian fighting spirit, [...:]

Eats green shoots and leaves?

Just a quick note: is it just me, or has the economic news started to darken again? Up through about March, every report was worse than you expected, often worse than you could have imagined. Since then, most reports - although continuing to be bad in an absolute sense - have "surprised on the upside." [...:]

Night they reread Minsky

Third Robbins lecture here.