Author Archives: jfrankel

The Roller Coaster of Economic Indicators

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The economy has been on a roller coaster ride since the cyclical peak of December 2007. (See illustration.) The gradual slide of early 2008 turned into a terrifying freefall in the last quarter of 2008 (after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy) and the first quarter of 2009. Now the train is probably at the bottom of the roller coaster valley.

The Index of Leading Economic Indicators, represented by the first car in the train, was this morning reported to have risen for the seventh consecutive month in October. Similarly, consumer confidence is substantially improved relative to February (though it, like all economic statistics, has experienced some bumps in the ride). The important middle cars, which represent measures of aggregate output, probably reached bottom in the early summer, and then started back up.  The BEA’s advanced estimate for GDP growth in the third quarter was 3 ½ % . read more

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The Dodd Bill: CoCo’s? Fine; Hobble the Fed? Don’t Do It.

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The National Journal asks views on a recent proposal for financial reform:    “The Dodd bill on financial regulatory reform embraces a supposed solution to the ‘Too Big To Fail’ conundrum: Contingent Convertible Bonds, or CoCos, which turn into equity once a bank’s capital falls below a certain level.”    

My response:

I do think that measures such as the Contingent Convertible Bonds would be a useful step. Some argue that it would be hard to know when to invoke the contingency clause.  It strikes me that this argument largely vanishes when one realizes that the clause would of necessity be invoked by the time we got to the stage of a Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. CoCos would not go very far in themselves toward comprehensive reform of the financial system, if that is the goal.  But then no single policy measure would do that.  I agree with Gillian Tett: “In theory, I think that CoCos certainly could be a useful additional to banks’ tool kits. However, in practice, the contagion risk suggests it would be dangerous to rely too heavily on an exclusive diet of CoCos for any policy ‘fix’.”  read more

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Counting “Jobs Saved” by Obama Fiscal Stimulus

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The National Journal asks: “Is the Obama administration’s stimulus plan helping to create or “save” 650,000 jobs, as the president and his aides say? Is that an appropriate way to measure the stimulus’ impact?”

My response:

I am astounded by claims that fiscal stimulus under recession circumstances doesn’t create jobs. Or at least I am astounded when such claims come even from some reputable economists.  Do they think that a construction job on a road-building project doesn’t count as a real job if the funding comes from the government?   More likely, they think that the increase in demand doesn’t raise output in the aggregate, because the federal debt crowds out private production and so someone else somewhere loses his or her job?  But that would be hard to believe, at a time when the Fed is keeping interest rates at zero, long-term interest rates are also quite low, and capacity is lying idle.  Moreover, Republican lectures to Democrats about the evils of the national debt take real chutzpah, after Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II increased the debt ten-fold during periods when no national emergency required it. read more

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