Plain Sense Economics

Was it Popeye’s friend, Wimpy, who kept asking for a hamburger on credit? Today’s credit markets are anything but robust, with reduced demand and supply for borrowed funds. Always eager to find obscure terms for modern dilemmas, economists refer to this condition as a liquidity trap. With a little prodding from Facebook friend and neighbor, [...]

I find that the older I get the more interested in history I become. Perhaps that’s because more events described in history texts are ones that I either experienced or knew about in contemporary times. Or, perhaps history is just comforting. Today we note some parallels with the European Debt/Monetary crisis and the early years [...]

So, who cares about the Greek debt crisis? It’s a small country, a long ways away.
Answers:
Greece as a Country: “We care!”
The Euro currency countries: “We care!”
Europe Generally: “We care!”
U.S. and International Financial Community: “We care!”
Stock Investors: “We care!”
All right, already.  Here’s why they care.
The background
Through a series of missteps over the last 10 years the [...]

As of February 2011, the Consumer Price Index has gone up 2.1 percent in the preceding 12 months. Core inflation (All items excluding Food and Energy) went up just 1.1%. Inflation is certainly not beating at the door. On the other hand, global food commodity prices have been rising suddenly as have oil prices. In [...]

The acclaimed radio/TV series, This American Life, aired a piece titled, “The Invention of Money”, in early 2011. There are two excellent stories – or “Acts” as TAL’s Ira Glass calls them – one on how a group of economists restored the public’s faith in the Brazilian currency, and another on how the Federal Reserve [...]

The price of gold has gone over $1,400 an ounce recently. In addition to the raft of stories and questions about investing in gold, I get questions about whether we should return to the gold standard. Blogger confession – I’m going to use the opportunity to organize my own thoughts on the issue.
The quick answer [...]

This rap video comes with a hat tip to Prof. Brad DeLong at Berkeley. It’s something of an inside joke to economists, but it reveals a fundamental tension between those who say we should use our understanding of economic forces to intervene for the sake of the country and the globe and those who place [...]

Jasen Hartford, a friend and past student, recently asked me,
As we all know, the European Union has recently been under the lime light with their budget deficit problem – causing a lot of anxiety for investors in the U.S. I’m curious if there’s a reason why the even greater deficit in [...]

At about the 6th or 7th week of my Principles of Macroeconomics class we have a kind of broad (though not deep) understanding of how the economy works, how we measure it, and some of the things government does to influence it. We’ve learned about fiscal policy and monetary policy; we have a rough idea [...]

There has been a rash of speeches, articles, and op-ed pieces exploring the origins of the housing bubble and trying to place the blame on the actions of the Federal Reserve. Some of these efforts are honorable – recognizing that we have a responsibility to understand what when wrong and how to avoid repeating those [...]