"Effects of Abandoning Fixed Exchange Rates for Greater Flexibility"

At the recent NBER ISOM conference, Andy Rose presented a paper entitled Flexing Your Muscles: Effects of Abandoning Fixed Exchange Rates for Greater Flexibility, coauthored with Barry Eichengreen, following up on this 2010 paper, evaluating the effect

Forecasting Commodity Prices

With commodity prices exhibiting wide fluctations over the past few years, it’s no wonder that many are interested in determining what procedure best forecasts. A recent New York Fed blog post by Jan Groen and Paolo Pesenti tackles this issue. In

Dispatches (XIV): "Walker cancels budget bill-signing at firm run by felon"

From the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal yesterday (h/t TPM):

Gov. Scott Walker has called off plans to sign the 2011-’13 budget bill at a private Green Bay-area company run by an executive with eight felony convictions, a spokesman announced today

Yuan Schizophrenia In The WSJ

Or more on China-U.S. exchange rate pass through

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal illustrated the conflicted nature of American views regarding real yuan appreciation. The front page article by Hilsenrath, Burkitt and Holmes argued “Change in China Hits

Three Pictures And Three Quotes For Anyone Who Wants To Withdraw Stimulus

Three pictures and three quotes

GDP growth is slackening:

 
Figure 1: Real GDP from 2011Q1 2nd release (blue bars), monthly GDP from Macroeconomic Advisers (red line) and from e-forecasting, all in billions of Ch.2005$. NBER defined recession da

Guest Contribution: The Fiscal Stimulus in 2009-11

Trade Openness, Fiscal Space and Exchange Rate Adjustment

Today, we are fortunate to have as guest contributors Joshua Aizenman of UC Santa Cruz and Yothin Jinjarak of the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University.

This post draws

In Order to Know Where You Are Going…

…you need to know how you got where you are. From the abstract to a working paper by myself, Barry Eichengreen and Hiro Ito, entitled A Forensic Analysis of Global Imbalances:

We re-examine the determinants of current account balances applying

Growth Forecasts and Informational Rigidities

From a new IMF working paper by Prakash Loungani:

We document information rigidity in forecasts for real GDP growth in 46 countries over the past two decades….

We investigate: (i) if rigidities are lower around turning points in the economy, su

May Employment Report

The Employment Situation release for May was not entirely a surprise, given Jim’s post yesterday, but contained unwelcome news nonetheless. WSJ RTE quotes Stephen Stanley of Pierpoint Securities thus: “…consider me worried”.

How Innocuous Is a Treasury Default?

Steven Englander, Global Head of G-10 FX strategy for Citi is not very sanguine about a Treasury default, especially as it pertains to foreign holders of Treasurys. From an email today (not online):

We argue below that the impact of a debt ceiling br