(A new addition to OTE, summing up the posts of the past week.)
- A prelude and multiple reactions to the June jobs report: musing about economic forecasting on jobs day eve, delivering a first impression, and delving into a bit more detail.
- Imagining being King for a day: I’d mandate a solid slug of job creation measures to complement and juice the Fed’s monetary stimulus.
- Examining a boost from consumer prices: the fact that there’s a bit more consumer buying power thanks to lower energy prices is one positive aspect of the current US economy.
- Considering a very important fiscal chart: an article by WSJ’s David Wessel tackles the question of whether the recent slowing of health care costs is cyclical, structural, or — most likely — a combination of both.
- Mulling over the resignation of the chairman of Barclays Bank as a result of a rate-rigging scandal around the Libor: anyone who’s paying any attention should be more convinced than ever of underlying instability of financial markets and thus the need for regulatory oversight.
- Scrutinizing the Medicaid opt-out: a few thoughts and observations, including some interesting questions that might be answered by the natural experiment created by the opt-out.
- Another edition of OTE LIVE!: discussing the tax trap (summarized here and here) with my CBPP colleague Chuck Marr.
Bonus: there’s been a huge spike in the use of the term “job killer” in prominent newspaper articles about progressive policies, but the job-killer claim rarely gets the evidentiary scrutiny it should.