Will a Smaller Fiscal Deficit Cause the Trade Deficit to Decline or Unemployment to Rise?

However, accounting identities do not tell us the direction in which causality flows, and so all identity-based arguments must implicitly make assumptions about which of the variables drive the other.

 That is the nub of the claim Shultz and Feldstein make. They argue that if we cut the U.S. fiscal deficit, the U.S. trade deficit must automatically decline.

 Michael Pettis, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 22 May 2017

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Cognitive blind spots

Bild
Cognitive blind spots are undermining our ability to see the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. At the start of the 21st century, western elites generally assumed that globalisation, democracy and the free market were self-evidently good, and would keep spreading, creating peace. N o longer.  FIS, Swiss Federal Intelligence Service, has published a manual about cognitive blind spots. 18 different cognitive biases that hamper our thinking, such as “group think” (adhering to the cosy assumptions of our tribe), “anchoring” (relying exclusively on whatever information we see first, say on social media),  “confirmation bias” (only seeing data that reinforces pre-existing views),  “mirror imaging” (assuming others think like us),  “absence of evidence” bias (failing to think about the data we lack)  and “survivorship bias” (judging data only with success stories, not failures). Gillian Tett Financial Times 2 January 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/...
Läs mer

Martin Wolf; The next crash - Why this time might not be different

Bild
Stock markets are not only ignoring the obvious threats, but seem imbued with extreme optimism. In the autumn of 1929, Irving Fisher, one of the greatest American economists, stated: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”  This turned out to be one of the most incorrect forecasts ever made: in short order, US and global stock markets were hit by the Great Crash, which was followed by the Great Depression. Maybe markets were in some sense “right” before the crash and wrong after it. But who cared? For investors and the hundreds of millions of people across the world whose lives were upended by the disaster, the gods of the stock market had failed for a generation. Why might this story be relevant today? The answer is that the valuation of US stocks is even higher today than in September 1929.  The first global financial crisis after the disaster of the 1930s in 2007-09: the easy monetary — and relaxed regulatory — policies adopted after the stoc...
Läs mer

27 juli. Oman. Yemen. Fallande oljepris. Wildfire threatens Bordeaux. Dance While The Music Still Goes On. Huawei.

Bild
I Spanien och Frankrike rasar de pågående bränderna fortfarande utom kontroll. I Frankrike säger president Emmanuel Macron att landet står inför sin värsta utmaning sedan andra världskriget. TT  27 juli 2026, 21:13 https://www.di.se/nyheter/macron-varsta-utmaningen-sedan-kriget/ Stockholmsbörsen inleder handelsveckan uppåt drivet av ett fallande oljepris. Alla 30 bolagen på OMXS30-indexet handlas på plussidan. DI 27 juli 2026, 09:24 https://www.di.se/live/gron-oppning-pa-stockholmsborsen-HbyW3/ Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq set to rise as oil prices dive after U.S. paused strikes on Iran; Treasury yields fall  https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-s-p-500-nasdaq-oil-prices-us-paused-strikes-iran-treasury-yields-fed-big-tech Måndagen såg ut att bjuda på en uppåtrekyl för Wall Streets minnes- och halvledarbolag efter fredagens tunga nedgångar. Men så blev inte fallet. DI 27 juli 2026, 16:33 https://www.di.se/live/plotslig-chipfrossa-pressar-wall-street/ N...
Läs mer