June 2012
45 posts
3 tags
Thoughts on Monetary and Fiscal Policy in the Wake...
This post will serve as the Table of Contents for the first month of supplysideliberal.com. But it is more than that. It is a chance to reflect on questions such as
Where have I been coming from in the posts so far?
Why am I here writing a blog?
Where am I going from here?
Only the most important reflections come before the Table of Contents proper. Lesser musings come after the Table of...
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Mike Sax: Review of (Some) Economics Blogs
It is always interesting to read reviews. Google Analytics helped me find Mike Sax’s very interesting review as a significant source of referrals. I thought I would share this with you. Let me give a disclaimer: the opinions about other blogs are Mike’s, not mine. Consider my level of endorsement the same as if I had approved it as a comment. Also, the title of Mike’s blog,...
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Mark Thoma: Laughing at the Laffer Curve →
In my first post “What is a Supply-Side Liberal?” I wrote
I believe the harm to the productive performance of the economy caused by taxes and regulations is serious (though seldom serious enough that a reduction in taxes would raise revenue).
Mark Thoma’s post (title above is a link) shows that the weight of informed opinion is behind my parenthetical remark. I can verify...
supplysideliberal.com on Facebook
Thanks to Diana Kimball’s technical assistance, Facebook is now another way to subscribe to this blog and my twitter activity at the same time. Almost all my Facebook activity will consist of whatever is forwarded from my blog and my twitter activity, so you won’t have many extraneous things to wade through.
There are some photos posted by others, which I think is a plus,...
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Mark Thoma on Rainy Day Funds for States
Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon and Author of the Blog Economist’s View, which is the Center of the Economics Blogosphere
I have to apologize to many in the blogosphere for not having been a regular blog reader in the past and so not being aware of posts preceding mine that are clearly relevant to my posts and so deserve acknowledgement. Unfortunately,...
1 tag
Wallace Neutrality and Ricardian Neutrality
Neil Wallace Robert Barro
Discoverer of Wallace Neutrality Ricardian Neutrality Revivalist
Scott Sumner posted a speedy reply to the question I posed for him in “Should the Fed Promise to Do the Wrong Thing in the Future to Have the Right Effect Now? His answer, like mine, is “No!”
On the whole,...
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Should the Fed Promise to Do the Wrong Thing in...
Scott Sumner: Professor of Economics at Bentley University and Author of the Blog TheMoneyIllusion
The question of the title is a question for Scott Sumner in particular. A few months ago, Scott Sumner used a phrase very similar to what I used in my post “Going Negative: The Virtual Fed Funds Rate Target” in his post “What Ben Bernanke Can Learn from Humpty Dumpty.” ...
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Justin Wolfers on the 6/20/2012 FOMC Statement →
Justin catches one very important thing that my recent post on the FOMC statement neglected to zero in on:
Fed admits it failed: “inflation over the medium term will run at or below the rate that it judges most consistent with its dual mandate.”
For reasons I will explain in my upcoming post “Optimal Monetary Policy: A Primer,” the translation of the Fed’s phrase...
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The supplysideliberal Review of the FOMC Monetary...
Ben Bernanke, Chair of the Federal Reserve Board and of the FOMC
The Fed—or, technically, the Federal Open Market Committee, abbreviated FOMC—came out with its June 20, 2012 monetary policy statement an hour and a half ago. I want to offer a review of the statement. This will be as much about parsing what the FOMC means as it is a critique. This review should be read in the...
Illustration Note Added to "Leading States in the... →
[Note on the cartoon: My technical and blog etiquette expert Diana Kimball tells me it is proper etiquette to acknowledge the origin of photos by linking to the source. I won’t go back and do that on all of my earlier posts, but I wanted to give you the link to this one because I found it early on, and then was frustrated that I couldn’t find it when it came time to post...
Mark Thoma: Kenya's Kibera Slum →
This is another tumblr link post. The title links to a post by Mark Thoma, who does the excellent economics blog aggregator Economist’s View. Mark writes about his personal observations in Kenya. He is struck by the importance of corruption in understanding the experience of Kenyans. This is consistent with one of the emphases in my last post “Leveling Up: Making the Transition...
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Leveling Up: Making the Transition from Poor...
A Home in Jakarta, Indonesia (at the intermediate levels of development)
Deirdre McCloskey posted her wonderful essay “Factual Free-Market Fairness” on bleedingheartlibertarians.com a few days ago. In it, she focuses on the follies of government. Her essay has generated a huge debate: 193 comments so far. These are central issues being debated. For example, here are Noah...
1 tag
Mike Konczal: What Constrains the Federal...
Anyone who has been following the monetary policy debates on this blog will be interested in this interview with Joseph Gagnon. Joseph was an insider at the Fed, but now works at the Peterson Institute for International Economics: thus he can speak freely.
Here is one exchange in the interview:
Mike Konczal: Let’s start with the basics. Does a random person — not at the highest...
1 tag
Going Negative: The Virtual Fed Funds Rate Target
Balance sheet monetary policy presents what the folks at the Fed call a “communications” problem. This “communications” problem matters because balance sheet monetary policy is, as it should be, the Fed’s primary tool once the fed funds rate (the very short-term interest rate at which banks lend to each other overnight) has already been brought down to essentially zero.
Take what the...
2 tags
Avoiding Fiscal Armageddon
I believe the continued existence of our species is of great value. Therefore it is worth paying a great price to reduce the chances of a nuclear Armageddon by even a little bit. There is reason to believe that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will significantly raise the chances of further nuclear proliferation—which in turn will raise the chances of nuclear war further down the road. ...
@mileskimball on Twitter
I consider my activity on Twitter to be an integral part of this blog. I strongly encourage everyone who subscribes with an RSS feed or on Tumblr, or who comes to this website frequently, to follow @mileskimball on Twitter as well. For those of you who are already Twitter users, just click the “Follow” button at the sidebar. If you are not yet a Twitter user, you might find it...
Notice of Revocable Permission to Reproduce...
Update: this legal notice has been superseded by the later legal notice dated 8/3/2012 linked at my sidebar and here. What you see below is null and void after November 1, 2012. Because I allowed 90 days for people to see the link to the updated legal notice at my sidebar, what you see has some legal effect until then, but its meaning is already greatly limited by the later, superseding legal...
1 tag
Mike Konczal: What Constrains the Federal... →
Anyone who has been following the monetary policy debates on this blog will be interested in this interview with Joseph Gagnon. Joseph was an insider at the Fed, but now works at the Peterson Institute for International Economics: thus he can speak freely.
Here is one exchange in the interview:
Mike Konczal: Let’s start with the basics. Does a random person — not at the highest...
Diana Kimball: Recording Skype Conversations on a... →
My daughter Diana spent two years working in Silicon Valley before starting business school and has been very helpful with information technology issues I have faced. For the cognoscenti, as further warrant of her tech-cred, it is also worth noting that Diana was co-founder of ROFLCon and has been on the program of major tech conferences.
So by the wonders of reblogging, I am going to...
2 tags
Diana Kimball on the Beginnings of... →
My dad’s an Economics professor, and Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal is his new blog—and I’m crazy about it. Not just because I’m crazy about him (I am), and not just because I helped him set it up (I did…on Tumblr, even!), but because I truly believe he’s found his medium. ”I think I’ve always thought in hypertext,” he told me a few days in. Read his first post and check out his Twitter...
