News
Bloomberg | Consumer Spending in U.S. Fell in June
Purchases declined 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington.
Politico | Energy programs prepare for debt deal pain
Popular energy and environmental programs should prepare for a decade of spending cuts under the debt deal reached late Sunday between the White House and congressional leaders.
CNBC | The Global Recovery Is Over': Siemens CEO
Siemens, the German engineering and power giant, on Thursday posted third-quarter earnings that missed analyst forecasts blaming a slowdown in the global economy for the drop in profits.
Econ Comments
Washington Times | BLANKLEY: Status quo shrugs off urgency - again
Timid establishment chooses incrementalism over saving the future.
Politico | AAA credit but junk bond politics
What if there’s another recession? That’s still a threat, even if the debt deal passes. If the recession starts while Barack Obama is president, it would normally be called “the Obama recession.”
WSJ | Excessive Optimism and Other Economic Biases
No president, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Secretary of the Treasury, or chairman of the Federal Reserve has ever forecast a recession.
Washington Times | FEULNER: Time for a red-tape rescue
Jettisoning useless rules can keep economy from flat-lining.
CNN: Money | The start-up law of comparative advantage
Applying macro economic theory to the start-up environment.
Blogs
Political Calculations | Will the Microrecession Grow Into a Full Blown Recession?
To find out, we applied our forward-looking GDP forecasting tool to project where GDP will likely be in the third quarter of 2011. The chart below illustrates our results:
Café Hayek | Bloody Keynesians
Paul Krugman, reinforces the impression that I’ve always had of Keynesian economics and continue to have to this day: it mistakes a symptom for an underlying problem and then proposes to treat the symptom.
Atlantic: Megan McArdle | The Coming Intra-Party Wars
Me, I'd like a single entitlement system that takes care of people who are actually destitute and unable to work, not this mad scheme whereby America's middle class is supposed to get rich by picking its own pockets.
Daily Capitalist | The Global Manufacturing Slowdown
The global community is learning that you actually have to produce something to make an economy grow. That is, you can’t grow by debt alone. And to grow you need capital, real capital, not just pieces of paper printed by some monetary authority.
Atlantic: Megan McArdle | The Power of Political Narrative
One of the frustrating things about the debt ceiling debate has been dealing with the competing narratives spun by those supporting the various positions. It isn't that these narratives are necessarily wrong, but that the people offering them present them with the confidence of someone describing settled history, rather than one possible way (and often far from the most likely way) that events could play out.
Reports
Heritage Foundation | High on Ozone: The EPA’s Latest Assault on Jobs and the Economy
The U.S. economy won a temporary reprieve with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement last week that new ozone standards, which had been slated for this summer, will be delayed. The EPA’s “reconsideration” of the ozone standards it set in 2008 and issuance of more stringent standards violate all three of the fundamental values EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged to honor: “science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.”
RCM: Wells Fargo | ISM Manufacturing: Slowdown in the Train, Easing Prices
U.S. manufacturing continues to expand with evidence of gains in output and employment, but the pace has clearly slowed. Meanwhile, the moderation of prices paid suggests some moderation of inflation ahead.
