Sunday, May 17, 2009

Today's Links


1) Alan Blinder on the importance of maintaining current monetary and fiscal policy

2) Krugman reacts to David Leonhardt's article on Sino-American economic relations. Krugman brings up an insightful point about our (flawed) emphasis on the bilateral nature of trade.
The argument that a reduction in China’s dollar purchases would be contractionary for America because it would drive up interest rates is equivalent to the argument that fiscal expansion is contractionary for the same reason — and equivalently wrong.
But what if China doesn’t spend more, but just reallocates its reserves from dollars to, say, euros? The answer is, that’s also good for us: a weaker dollar will help our exports, at Europe’s expense.



3) Niall Ferguson's refreshing historical account on financial regulation

Today's Links

The Brink of Foreclosure

The Times has a stunning account of one man's credit crisis. It's hard not to envision similar situations playing out all across the country. The closing paragraphs of the story are just as troubling, it seems that JP Morgan's mortgage management process is backward and overwhelmed. Cleaning up this mess will continue to be a herculean task.