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Odd Numbers
by Zubin Jelveh

Posted: Dec 31 2008 9:13AM EST

The Year in Research

Once again, here's a completely subjective rundown of the most noteworthy academic research that sprung forth from academia in 2008. 1) Subprime All the Time What we learned, sort of learned, and should have learned about the financial crisis: Bubble ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 19 2008 7:52PM EST

Mind Your Value Judgements

In the leadup to government bailouts this year, a number of commentators said that if the U.S. did succumb to some sort of systemic crisis, it would have shown that despite its wealth, it's no better than a banana-republic ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 19 2008 3:45PM EST

S.E.C. Short-Sale Ban: Pretty Much Useless

That's the conclusion from the preliminary results of a new paper by Ekkehart Boehmer of Texas A&M, Charles Jones of Columbia, and Cornell's Xiaoyan Zhang. They studied the impact of the short-sale ban which lasted between mid-September to early October and ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 19 2008 2:31PM EST

Advice from Japan: Don't Forget TARP 1

Delivered via Janet Yellen, who just came back from a trip to East Asia: analysts universally concluded that the government needs to help banks get toxic assets off their balance sheets. Otherwise, banks will remain focused on the potential for ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 18 2008 8:57PM EST

Chart of the Day: Money Market Stress Easing

The Libor-OIS spread is getting within striking distance of its pre-Lehman levels: The big moves down in October were related to the bank recapitlization plan and the announcement of the Fed's programs to buy assets from the non-financial sector. It's ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 18 2008 5:57PM EST

House Price Bubble Deflated?

Interesting set of charts from a presentation by Columbia's real estate guru Chris Mayer showing house prices relative to 50-year trends: It looks like there is a bit of mean-reversion going on here, but two factors make Mayer think that ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 16 2008 11:03PM EST

Where Were the Whistleblowers?

Mark Gimein points to "a legal precedent set in the Bayou case that should scare the heck out of anyone who once invested with Madoff but who managed to get out safely in the last few years: Any investors who ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 13 2008 10:20PM EST

It's Just a Recession

In this week's Off the Charts column, NYT's Floyd Norris describes how the young and old are having a very different experience so far in this one-year-old recession: There are now more jobs than there were a year ago for ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 12 2008 7:46PM EST

Comparing American and European Unemployment Insurance

With the economy in tatters and the Democrats in control of the presidency and Congress come January, it would seem like the perfect time for an expansion of various social insurance schemes -- a New Deal II. But no doubt ... Continue

Posted: Dec 11 2008 4:33PM EST

Back to Normal?

The Fed released the Q3 Flow of Funds report this afternoon, and the news was not altogether surprising: Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. household wealth fell in the third quarter by the most on record as property values and stock ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 10 2008 4:11PM EST

Chart of the Day: Japan Under Quantitative Easing

Owen F. Humpage and Michael Shenk of the Cleveland Fed have a nice summary of what happened to Japan's economy under quantitative easing between 2001-06. Overall, they offer what I interpret as a mixed outlook for the prospects of quantitative ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 9 2008 4:13PM EST

Don't Cry for Capitalism

Michael Dueker predicts that about another 5.4 million jobs (as per my eye-balled estimate of this chart) will be gone by the time the recession is over. (A figure pretty close to the one I got using historical averages.)Most anyone ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 8 2008 4:58PM EST

Can We Remember the Pain of Bubbles Past?

In a recent EconTalk podcast, host Russ Roberts and Yale's Robert Shiller got into a good discussion over the origins of the subprime crisis, which Shiller largely attributes to bubble psychology. But Roberts offered an interesting test: Shiller: It's this ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 5 2008 6:04PM EST

The Pain to Come

It's probably the last thing anyone wants to hear so soon after news of the 533,000 lost jobs suffered last month -- but if history is a guide, it's only going to get worse from here. That's because the majority ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 4 2008 3:34PM EST

The Lending Standards Red Herring

I'd taken a hiatus from talking about the role -- or more precisely, lack of a role -- of lending standards in bringing down the economy, but a couple of developments today pull me back to it. In his speech ... Continue
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Posted: Dec 1 2008 4:38PM EST

Should the Fed Go Long?

I missed this bit from Bernanke in my earlier post: Although conventional interest rate policy is constrained by the fact that nominal interest rates cannot fall below zero, the second arrow in the Federal Reserve's quiver--the provision of liquidity--remains ... Continue

Posted: Dec 1 2008 2:58PM EST

Bernanke's Speech

Some takeaways from the Fed Chairman's speech: 1) Tough talk on the need for banks to realize that the easy days are over: Ultimately, however, market participants themselves must address the fundamental sources of financial strains by raising new capital ... Continue
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Posted: Nov 30 2008 9:36AM EST

Even Nobel Economists Can Be Intellectually Dishonest

Paul Krugman argues on his blog that Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Great Depression hypothesis has "taken a hit": A central theme of Keynes's General Theory was the impotence of monetary policy in depression-type conditions. But Milton Friedman and Anna ... Continue
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Posted: Nov 28 2008 1:24PM EST

A 5-Point Plan for Getting Out of This

In assessing Japan's decade-long, stop-and-start effort to repair the damages caused by its stock and real estate bubbles, Morgan Stanley's Robert Alan Feldman comes up with a plan that can be mimicked by other countries. Let's see how the U.S ... Continue
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Posted: Nov 26 2008 11:25PM EST

Do Markets Filter Irrationality?

It's tough to defend market rationality these days, but University of Chicago's John List is putting up a good fight. Just published in the The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Assumptions of individual rationality and preference stability provide ... Continue
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