Parsing the Polls: Does US Public Opinion Realy Support a Strong Climate Policy?

The latest polls of US public opinion bring both good news and bad for the success of the COP21 climate talks now underway in Paris.

On the positive side, a new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that two-thirds of Americans think their country should join an international treaty requiring it to reduce emissions in an effort to fight global warming. That includes a slim majority of Republicans. When pollsters pointed out that such a treaty is likely to involve tradeoffs between stimulating the economy and protecting the environment, respondents favored protecting the environment by 54 to 34 percent.

Those numbers suggest the kind of strong public backing that US negotiators would need to achieve a treaty with real teeth in it. To most economists, whether conservative, progressive, or libertarian, “real teeth” can only mean carbon taxes or some other mechanism to subject frontline decision makers in households, businesses, and governments to the grinding, day-to-day pressure of market prices. Are you going to drive your Prius instead of your SUV to the store today? Are you going to serve a smaller steak for dinner? Are you going to diversify your giant energy company away from fossil fuels before it goes the way of Kodak? Probably not, if failing to act costs you nothing.


But before you get the your hopes up, let’s take a closer look at those opinion polls. US public support for strong action on climate change may be broad, but there are indications that it is also shallow and fragile. >>>Read more

Is the Federal Debt Out of Control? Here is Why it is Not

Note to Readers: Ed Dolan's Econ Blog is back, now that I have finished a time-consuming revision of my econ textbook (to be released soon). Thank you for your patience.
 
The GOP primary has become an orgy of fear mongering, and not just about immigrants and terrorists. The candidates regularly portray the federal debt, too, as a dire threat to America’s future. Some samples:

• Marco Rubio: “We have a $19 trillion bipartisan debt and it continues to grow as we borrow money from countries that do not like us to pay for government we cannot afford. . . The time to act is now. The time to turn the page is now. If we — if we don’t act now, we are going to be the first generation in American history that leaves our children worse off than ourselves.”
• Chris Christie: “We have $19 trillion in debt. . . And we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop? . . . Are you concerned like I am that the debt and deficits of Washington, D.C. are endangering America’s future?”
• Mike Huckabee: “I do not want to walk my five grandkids through the charred remains of a once great country called America, and say, ‘Here you go, $20 trillion dollars of debt. Good luck making something out of this mess.’ ”
• Rand Paul: “You know, I left my medical practice and ran for office because I was concerned about an $18 trillion debt. We borrow a million dollars a minute. Now, on the floor of the Congress, the Washington establishment from both parties puts forward a bill that will explode the deficit. It allows President Obama to borrow unlimited amounts of money. I will stand firm. I will spend every ounce of energy to stop it. I will begin tomorrow to filibuster it. And I ask everyone in America to call Congress tomorrow and say enough is enough; no more debt.”

An exploding debt certainly sounds scary, but are federal finances that far out of control? Not really. If we look at the numbers, we can see that the debt is far from the dire threat the Republican candidates make it out to be. >>>Read more

Follow this link to view or download a slideshow tutorial with additional examples and charts related to sustainability of the federal debt.

Why Greece is More Like Argentina than Like Israel

Bernard Avishai, who teaches business at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published an article in The New Yorker this week titled “Why Greece Needs the Euro.” A key part of his argument hinges on a comparison between Greece and Italy. In fact, Avishai has it backwards. A closer look at the Israeli experience shows that Greece does not need the euro. Here is why:


After considering the argument that Canada’s flexible exchange rate helped it recover rapidly from the global crisis of 2008, Avishai writes that “Israel is a more telling example than Canada, having suffered an economic crisis much like Greece’s, in the early eighties.” In response to the crisis, he explains, Prime Minister Simon Peres introduced a new shekel pegged to the dollar. “The Israeli government’s decision to keep the new shekel constant and to seek free access to American and European markets was the foundation of the entrepreneurial economy that emerged in Israel during the nineties,” he concludes.

A strange argument. What Avishai inexplicably fails to mention is that Israel quickly abandoned its fixed exchange rate as unsustainable. >>>Read more

Trump Blames US Export Woes on Chinese Currency Manipulation. Really?

Donald Trump is surging in the GOP primary polls, partly on the basis of a carefully crafted reputation for telling it as it is. Even rival Ted Cruz thinks Trump is “teriffic” and “brash,” saying, “I think he tells the truth.” But when he comes to China’s exchange rate policy, he is about as far from the truth as he could get.

Last week Jake Tapper, host of  CNN's "State of the Union," interviewed Trump on a wide range of issues. It wasn’t long before the conversation turned to trade, jobs, and China. “You have to take the jobs back from China” before you can even begin to solve problems like the national debt and healthcare, Trump asserted.

Tapper slyly pointed to a Trump necktie he had put on for the occasion. “Isn’t it hypocritical of you to talk about this,” he asked, “while you’re manufacturing your clothes in China?”

“Not at all,” Trump replied. “A lot of them are made in China, because they've manipulated their currency to such a point that it's impossible for our companies to compete with them.”
So, does China really manipulate its currency? Can we blame China for the lack of American competitiveness? We’re going to hear a lot about Chinese currency manipulation before this presidential campaign is over, so it might be a good idea to do some fact checking right at the outset. >>>Read more

Program Notes for the Greek Endgame: Austerity, Cyprus, and How to Exit a Currency Area

The Greek government has rejected the latest austerity and reform proposals from the EU, the ECB, and the IMF.  It has declared a national referendum, scheduled for Sunday, and urges a "No" vote. "We ask you to reject it with all the might of your soul, with the greatest margin possible," says Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Greek banks, which have been hit by an accelerating run, are to remain closed until after the vote. Yet rumors swirl of behind-the-scenes talk and a last minute deal.

We don’t yet know what lies ahead—default? Exit from the euro? Exit from the EU? Some kind of muddling through with a parallel currency and a declaration that any default is “only technical”? Answers to those questions will come only after Greek voters make a choice.

Meanwhile, here are some program notes and links to background material that should help place the Greek crisis in the context of similar episodes elsewhere.

How Tough has Greek Austerity Really Been?

To hear Greeks tell it, their country has undergone a deeper slump and tougher austerity measures than any other European country. Some of their EU partners, on the other hand, portray the Greek government as unwilling to take moderate, common-sense measures that everyone else has already successfully implemented. What do the numbers say?

This post, published at the time of the elections that brought the radical left Syriza party to power, shows that the Greek perception is largely correct. The slump in Greece, as measured by the gap between current and full-employment levels of GDP, has been catastrophic, a plunge of more than 20 percentage points. At the same time, budget cuts and tax increases have moved the best indicator of austerity—the underlying primary budget balance—nearly 20 percentage points toward surplus. Those movements far exceed what has happened in the United States or in any other European country. Read more

A Critique of the ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate

A few weeks ago, I posted a critique of the alternate inflation measure devised by John Williams for his popular website ShadowStats.com. Several responders asked if I could also comment on Williams’ alternate unemployment rate.

Here, reproduced with permission is the latest unemployment chart from ShadowStats. Like William’s inflation rate, his unemployment numbers run far higher than the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This post addresses two questions: First, what is the intended purpose of the ShadowStats alternate unemployment indicator? Second, given what it tries to do, is it calculated in a reasonable way?

 In search of the employment gap
The standard unemployment rate from the BLS, known as U-3, focuses on a very narrow segment of the labor market. It tells us how many people are not working but who have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force. (The civilian labor force includes all people 16 years and older who are not in prison or the armed services.)The ratio of active job seekers to the labor force is highly sensitive to ups and downs in the business cycle. For that reason, monetary and fiscal policymakers watch it closely in deciding whether the economy needs stimulus or restraint. It is not perfect, but if what we want is a short-term business cycle indicator, it is probably good enough.

Williams, however, is looking for something different. His alternate unemployment rate should be understood as a broad measure of the employment gap—the difference between the amount of work that people would like to do and the amount they actually do. >>>Read more

Spillover from Russian Crisis Hits Latvian Economy, but So Far the Damage is Limited

From the beginning, it was clear that the economic crisis in Russia would pose multiple problems for Latvia and its Baltic neighbors. Until recently, many businesspeople in Latvia had seen close trade, transportation, and financial linkages as strengths that allowed their country to serve as Russia’s economic portal to the EU. Since the middle of last year, a collapse in oil prices, compounded by sanctions and countersanctions arising from the Ukraine conflict, have sent the Russian economy into a tailspin. Latvian ties to Russia have become liabilities rather than assets.

As the chart shows, growth of the Latvian economy has slowed since the Ukraine conflict began in the spring of 2014, but not come to a halt. According to preliminary data for the first quarter of this year, growth remains equal to the Eurozone average, which itself is improving. In that regard, Latvia has done better than neighboring Estonia and Lithuania, which have also felt the impact of conditions in Russia. >>>Read more