A Fascinating Debate in the Macro Blogosphere
Jared Bernstein | On the Economy | April 2nd, 2015
The macro blogosphere is on fire, as Bernanke, Summers, and Krugman are having a fascinating discussion that starts with secular stagnation (persistently weak demand, even in expansions), adds a strong dose of international trade with an emphasis on the Bernanke savings glut observations, and thus speaks to a lot of what we think about here at OTE.
When we think of economic downturns, we generally think of them as flat up or down. We are all familiar with terms like recession. That is what we are now very slowly getting out of. We know, from our parents and grandparents, what the utter devastation of a depression is. We know, from our most recent experience, the Great Recession, what that feels like. Some months back, a term was added to the economic conversation: secular stagnation. Though the concept isn’t a new one, it has recently been reintroduced. Continue reading Defining Secular Stagnation | Economics→
You often find people talking about our economic difficulties as if they were complicated and mysterious, with no obvious solution. As the economist Dean Baker recently pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. The basic story of what went wrong is, in fact, almost absurdly simple: We had an immense housing bubble, and, when the bubble burst, it left a huge hole in spending. Everything else is footnotes. Continue reading Paul Krugman: Build We Won’t |NYTimes→
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