Time for Another Victory Lap by þe Fed (& þe Biden Administration!), &
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-04-01 Fr
FIRST: Time for Another Victory Lap by the Fed (& the Biden Administration!)
A very nice, nice employment report this AM:
Colby Smith & Peter Wells: US Economy Gained 431,000 jobs in March as Tight Labour Market Persists: ‘Unemployment rate falls to 3.6%…. For every unemployed person in the US there are roughly 1.7 openings…. January and February payrolls were revised higher by a combined 95,000…. Average hourly earnings registered a 0.4 per cent monthly gain, translating to a 5.6 per cent increase from the same period last year…. The share of Americans either employed or looking for work has crept higher, but remains shy of pre-pandemic levels… the labour force participation rate… 62.4 per cent. In February 2020, it stood at 63.4 per cent…
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/0de891b8-b6bb-4b91-b939-24d008511224>
Half a million a month is our steady-as-she-goes rate of increase in payroll employment:
We are leaving rubber on the road as we rejoin the highway traffic at speed—but that is expected, and, indeed, inevitable: complain about our current inflation and wish we did not have it, and you are wishing we were repeating the catastrophic and disastrous anemic recovery of the early 2010s:
And inflation expectations in the bond market remain very well anchored. And I do not see a path to a wage-price inflationary spiral that would be difficult and painful to resolve without, first, a loss of the expectational inflation anchor in the bond market:
Things that are completely missing from the discussion from the "Oh woe! Inflation is above 2%! Oh woe!”-ers. How do they expect us to make the wheel to our goods-&-deliverator-heavier economy that we need to make without inflation as prices and wages rise in sectors that need to expand? How do they expect us to regain full employment rapidly without inflation? A short burst of inflation is what a rebalancing and wheeling economy does. We did it in 1948 and 1951, and the inflation passed. What is it that is going to make this time different from those times?
One Audio:
The Ezra Klein Show, with Larry Summers <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-lawrence-summers.html>
Very Briefly Noted:
David Glasner: Three Propagation Mechanisms in Lucas & Sargent <https://uneasymoney.com/2022/03/30/three-propagation-mechanisms-in-lucas-and-sargent/>
Wikipedia: Mystic River (Film) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_River_(film)>
Lutz Kilian & Michael D. Plante: The Russian Oil Supply Shock of 2022: ‘If the bulk of Russian energy exports is off the market for the remainder of 2022, a global economic downturn seems unavoidable… could be more protracted than that in 1991… <https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/0322>
Patrick T. Reardon & William Cronon: Nature’s Metropolis Turns 25 <https://edgeeffects.net/natures-metropolis/>
David Epstein: Why Propaganda Works (The “Illusory Truth Effect”) <https://davidepstein.bulletin.com/why-propaganda-works-the-illusory-truth-effect/>
Michael Bérubé & Jennifer Ruth: When Professors’ Speech Is Disqualifying <https://newrepublic.com/article/165649/professors-speech-disqualifying>
Irwin Garfinkel & al.: The Benefits and Costs of a U.S. Child Allowance: ‘Making that expansion permanent would cost $97 billion per year and generate social benefits with net present value of $982 billion per year… <https://www.nber.org/papers/w29854>
Martin Wolf: Rishi Sunak Fails to Address the Hit to Living Standards: ‘It is hard to see a good justification for the chancellor’s decision to leave the most vulnerable worse off… <https://www.ft.com/content/c1f556de-b8e9-400f-a557-c9e8f32461b5>
Robert Citino: Kharkov 1943: The Wehrmacht’s Last Victory <https://www.historynet.com/kharkov-1943-the-wehrmachts-last-victory/?te=1&nl=paul-krugman&emc=edit_pk_20220322>
Guy Gavriel Kay: All the Seas of the World <https://www.lovereading.co.uk/book/22222/All-the-Seas-of-the-World-by-Guy-Gavriel-Kay.html>
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Matthew Yglesias: Develop a Healthier Emotional Relationship with Joe Manchin: ‘Joe Manchin stepped up. Had he retired, the Democratic nominee would have definitely lost to Patrick Morrissey. America is lucky that Shelley Moore Capito is quietly reasonable despite representing a super-duper conservative state. Morrissey isn’t. But Manchin chose to run, and he won. We should all be thankful. Gratitude doesn’t mean always agreeing…
Matthew C. Klein: How to Dominate the Economic Battlefield with a “Freedom Fund”
Charlie Sykes: Too Crazy for Mo Brooks: ‘Trump wanted him to rescind the election…
Zvi Mowshowitz: More Data & Peace Terms
Ken White: Our Fundamental Right to Shame And & the New York Times <
Nicole Barbaro: How Does Life Really Work?: ‘So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World_ by Raghuveer Parthasarathy… self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling… at the core foundation of life…
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