CERF Blog

Many economists declared the recession over after the third-quarter GDP release. We at CERF disagreed and pointed out that almost every long recession has had at least one quarter of positive growth during the recession. We also pointed out that many of the reasons for the relatively strong third quarter were temporary. We just didn’t… Read more

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a piece by John Cogan, John Taylor and Volker Wieland. Cogan and Taylor are famous and respected economists. Volker is younger. He was Taylor’s student and at the Fed when I was there. I found him careful, thoughtful, and smart. Their piece is titled “The Stimulus Didn’t Work.” They provide… Read more

Today’s news will be dominated by the BLS’s unemployment data release. I’m sure we’ll have more to say on that. Right now, I’d like to discuss a less-publicized data release, one that probably has more information than the unemployment data. Yesterday, the FDIC released bank charge-off data, and it was disappointing and scary. I’ve posted… Read more

I always figured that the administration would take credit for any eventual economic recovery, but I also figured that they would wait for the recovery. Wrong. Cristina Romer, perhaps buoyed by yesterday’s GDP release and today’s job data, says that the stimulus is working.