The Grumpy Economist

Torsten Slok of Deutsche Bank sends along the following fascinating graphs The titles seem a little off. Yes, the market is expecting ...

David Henderson posts a thoughtful  draft op-ed by Jonathan Meer on minimum wages. Two talents of  great economists are to recognize that av...

The Fed sets interests rates. But how does the Fed set interest rates? The Fed is undergoing a big review of this question. We had a littl...

I'm on a panel at the " ECB and its watchers " conference Wednesday, to discuss central bank independence. Here are my comment...

Is the US economy getting more concentrated or less? At the aggregate level, more. This is a widely noted fact, leading quickly to calls for...

Torsten Slok at DB sent along this lovely graph. The underlying paper  "Eclipse of the Public Corporation or Eclipse of the Public ...

Timothy Taylor, the Conversable Economist, tracks down the oft-told story of William Lee and his knitting machine . ...the 2019 World Deve...

In its death note to narrow banks  (link to  Federal Register  where you can post comments;  previous post ),  the Fed claimed charmingly th...

Suppose an entrepreneur came up with a plan for a financial institution that is completely safe -- it can never fail, it can never suffer a ...

People really do not need health insurance for regular small expenses, as they do not need car insurance to "pay for" oil changes....

In the aftermath of 9/11, there was some debate whether TSA should be federal employees, or run privately, and paid for by airlines. Governm...

An interesting question emerged from some discussion surrounding my last carbon tax post. How big will the tax be? The letter says $40 a to...

The Federal Government seems to be obeying with rather remarkable accuracy the constitutional mandate that the government may not spend mone...

The " Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends " in the Wall Street Journal this week is a remarkable document. It's short, s...

An essay at The Hill  on what to make of market volatility, from Dec 31. Now that two weeks have passed, I can post the whole thing. I add s...

How much is the property tax? In Calfornia, we pay 1%  per year. That doesn't seem bad, except that property values are very high. You...