In its top of the half hour news segment on morning edition (sorry, no link), Morning Edition told listeners that the stock market plunged on Monday because of the fallout from the failure of the supercommittee. Of course the stock market does not tell us why it moves the way it does. This was NPR’s assessment of the reason for the market’s movement.
NPR’s assessment suffers from two problems. First, the failure of the supercommittee was widely expected by the end of last week. This means that most of the impact should have been seen last week, not on Monday.
The other problem is that a failure to deal with the deficit, insofar as the deficit is viewed as a major problem, should most directly affect the bond market. In fact bonds went the way: prices rose and yields fell.
If there was concern that deficits would now become dangerously large as a result of the supercommittee’s failure, the bond market did the exact opposite of what would have been predicted. This suggests the need to find an alternative explanation for the drop in the stock market, like the growing probability that the euro will meltdown and produce another Lehman type freeze up. That would be very bad news for the economy and future corporate profits.
In its top of the half hour news segment on morning edition (sorry, no link), Morning Edition told listeners that the stock market plunged on Monday because of the fallout from the failure of the supercommittee. Of course the stock market does not tell us why it moves the way it does. This was NPR’s assessment of the reason for the market’s movement.
NPR’s assessment suffers from two problems. First, the failure of the supercommittee was widely expected by the end of last week. This means that most of the impact should have been seen last week, not on Monday.
The other problem is that a failure to deal with the deficit, insofar as the deficit is viewed as a major problem, should most directly affect the bond market. In fact bonds went the way: prices rose and yields fell.
If there was concern that deficits would now become dangerously large as a result of the supercommittee’s failure, the bond market did the exact opposite of what would have been predicted. This suggests the need to find an alternative explanation for the drop in the stock market, like the growing probability that the euro will meltdown and produce another Lehman type freeze up. That would be very bad news for the economy and future corporate profits.
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The NYT ran a piece in the news section bemoaning the failure of the supercommittee. The piece includes numerous assertions expressing the paper’s unhappiness with the failure of the supercommittee that have no basis in reality.
For example, it told readers:
“The failure of the committee — which had been dubbed, with typical inside-the-Beltway grandiosity, the — led to predictable, if bitter, kryptonite jokes. But it also prompted wrenching questions about whether Congress can be trusted to do its job: the committee, after all, was supposed to do the hard work that lawmakers had put off in August when they eventually agreed to avert default by raising the nation’s , waiting so long to do so that Standard & Poor’s lowered the United States’s credit rating.”
It’s hardly obvious that the failure has prompted “wrenching questions,” even if the NYT might want it to. It is also not clear that the immediate issue facing the country is the “hard work” of reducing the deficit. Given that there are more than 26 million people unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up looking for work altogether, it would be reasonable to conclude that the most pressing problem is getting the economy back on track. This would require more stimulus, the opposite of deficit reduction.
This is an opinion piece that belongs on the editorial pages.
The NYT ran a piece in the news section bemoaning the failure of the supercommittee. The piece includes numerous assertions expressing the paper’s unhappiness with the failure of the supercommittee that have no basis in reality.
For example, it told readers:
“The failure of the committee — which had been dubbed, with typical inside-the-Beltway grandiosity, the — led to predictable, if bitter, kryptonite jokes. But it also prompted wrenching questions about whether Congress can be trusted to do its job: the committee, after all, was supposed to do the hard work that lawmakers had put off in August when they eventually agreed to avert default by raising the nation’s , waiting so long to do so that Standard & Poor’s lowered the United States’s credit rating.”
It’s hardly obvious that the failure has prompted “wrenching questions,” even if the NYT might want it to. It is also not clear that the immediate issue facing the country is the “hard work” of reducing the deficit. Given that there are more than 26 million people unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up looking for work altogether, it would be reasonable to conclude that the most pressing problem is getting the economy back on track. This would require more stimulus, the opposite of deficit reduction.
This is an opinion piece that belongs on the editorial pages.
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The NYT should have pointed this fact out in a discussion of the crisis facing the euro zone. The article includes a quote from Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s Finance Minister:
“I’m convinced that if we abandoned the promise of euro stability, we would have a few weeks, maybe a few months of relief on the financial markets. But after a few months the problem would return. It is all about trust.”
If the European Central Bank (ECB) is buying debt issued by euro zone countries and explicitly guaranteeing their value, then it is logically impossible for the problem to return in a few months. The problem at the moment is one of solvency, Greece, Italy, and now Spain and possibly France risk being in a situation where they cannot pay their debts. They effective face bankruptcy.
However, their debt is payable in euros. The ECB will never run out of euros, it can create an infinite amount of euros. This means that Mr. Schäuble is either confused or being deliberately misleading when he claims that the problem would return if the ECB took responsibility for backing up sovereign debt. It will not.
In principle, the euro zone countries would risk inflation by going this route, but given the vast amounts of excess capacity throughout the euro zone, this is not a near-term fear. (Of course, somewhat higher inflation would be desirable since it would reduce debt burdens and facilitate the adjustments of Spain, Greece and Italy so that they could regain competitiveness in the euro zone.)
The euro zone countries need not fear a flight from the euro for the same reason that the United States need not fear a flight from the dollar. If the euro were to plunge against the dollar and other currencies, the products of euro zone countries would become hyper-competitive. Their exports to the rest of the world would soar and its imports would plunge. The United States, China, and other major countries would not tolerate this disruption to their economies. They would feel the need to support the euro and keep such a plunge from happening, in the unlikely event that the markets sent the euro tumbling.
The NYT should have pointed this fact out in a discussion of the crisis facing the euro zone. The article includes a quote from Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s Finance Minister:
“I’m convinced that if we abandoned the promise of euro stability, we would have a few weeks, maybe a few months of relief on the financial markets. But after a few months the problem would return. It is all about trust.”
If the European Central Bank (ECB) is buying debt issued by euro zone countries and explicitly guaranteeing their value, then it is logically impossible for the problem to return in a few months. The problem at the moment is one of solvency, Greece, Italy, and now Spain and possibly France risk being in a situation where they cannot pay their debts. They effective face bankruptcy.
However, their debt is payable in euros. The ECB will never run out of euros, it can create an infinite amount of euros. This means that Mr. Schäuble is either confused or being deliberately misleading when he claims that the problem would return if the ECB took responsibility for backing up sovereign debt. It will not.
In principle, the euro zone countries would risk inflation by going this route, but given the vast amounts of excess capacity throughout the euro zone, this is not a near-term fear. (Of course, somewhat higher inflation would be desirable since it would reduce debt burdens and facilitate the adjustments of Spain, Greece and Italy so that they could regain competitiveness in the euro zone.)
The euro zone countries need not fear a flight from the euro for the same reason that the United States need not fear a flight from the dollar. If the euro were to plunge against the dollar and other currencies, the products of euro zone countries would become hyper-competitive. Their exports to the rest of the world would soar and its imports would plunge. The United States, China, and other major countries would not tolerate this disruption to their economies. They would feel the need to support the euro and keep such a plunge from happening, in the unlikely event that the markets sent the euro tumbling.
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The NYT had a piece that implied surprise that firms are cutting back production and investment plans at the same time that they are using billions of dollars to buy back shares of stock. It is difficult to understand the cause of the surprise. Demand and growth are very weak. In such circumstances, it would be expected that firms would cut back investment. Firms invest to make money, they don’t invest to help the economy.
The only surprising item in this piece is the claim that:
“But spending on capital investments like new plants and infrastructure has stagnated more broadly in corporate America, confounding efforts by the Obama administration to spur economic growth.”
Investment in the economy is actually quite high (investment in equipment in software is nearly back to its pre-recession share of GDP) given the huge amounts of excess capacity in many sectors. If the Obama administration was banking on even more investment than we are seeing then its economic advisers have an extremely poor understanding of economics.
The NYT had a piece that implied surprise that firms are cutting back production and investment plans at the same time that they are using billions of dollars to buy back shares of stock. It is difficult to understand the cause of the surprise. Demand and growth are very weak. In such circumstances, it would be expected that firms would cut back investment. Firms invest to make money, they don’t invest to help the economy.
The only surprising item in this piece is the claim that:
“But spending on capital investments like new plants and infrastructure has stagnated more broadly in corporate America, confounding efforts by the Obama administration to spur economic growth.”
Investment in the economy is actually quite high (investment in equipment in software is nearly back to its pre-recession share of GDP) given the huge amounts of excess capacity in many sectors. If the Obama administration was banking on even more investment than we are seeing then its economic advisers have an extremely poor understanding of economics.
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The NYT is generally a strong supporter of more open trade. However, for some reason its editorial on constraining costs in Medicare never mentioned an increased role for trade. This is peculiar since the fact that the health care system in the United States is so much more costly than health care systems elsewhere in the world (we pay more than twice as much per person for our care as people in other wealthy countries) means that there are large opportunities of gains from trade.
People who prefer freer trade to protectionism should be looking in this direction. The potential gains are several orders of magnitude larger than the potential gains from various trade deals over the last two decades.
The NYT is generally a strong supporter of more open trade. However, for some reason its editorial on constraining costs in Medicare never mentioned an increased role for trade. This is peculiar since the fact that the health care system in the United States is so much more costly than health care systems elsewhere in the world (we pay more than twice as much per person for our care as people in other wealthy countries) means that there are large opportunities of gains from trade.
People who prefer freer trade to protectionism should be looking in this direction. The potential gains are several orders of magnitude larger than the potential gains from various trade deals over the last two decades.
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A NYT piece on the likely failure of the supercommittee included a quote from Senator John Kyl:
“You can’t grow if you raise taxes in the middle of a recession.”
It would have been worth pointing out that according to the Congressional Budget Office and most standard economic models, it also hurts growth to have budget cuts in the middle of a recession. In fact, these models generally show that a dollar of spending cuts is considerably more harmful to growth than a dollar of tax increases. If Senator Kyl is primarily concerned about ensuring growth until we are out of the recession, then he would be resisting spending cuts right now rather than pushing them.
This piece includes a quote from Erskine Bowles. It would have been helpful to remind readers that Mr. Bowles is a director of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment bank.
A NYT piece on the likely failure of the supercommittee included a quote from Senator John Kyl:
“You can’t grow if you raise taxes in the middle of a recession.”
It would have been worth pointing out that according to the Congressional Budget Office and most standard economic models, it also hurts growth to have budget cuts in the middle of a recession. In fact, these models generally show that a dollar of spending cuts is considerably more harmful to growth than a dollar of tax increases. If Senator Kyl is primarily concerned about ensuring growth until we are out of the recession, then he would be resisting spending cuts right now rather than pushing them.
This piece includes a quote from Erskine Bowles. It would have been helpful to remind readers that Mr. Bowles is a director of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment bank.
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A NYT piece on the failure of the supercommittee repeatedly referred to plans to “change” Social Security and Medicare. The supercommittee was not considering random changes to these programs, they were proposing cuts. The purpose was to save money, not make the programs better.
These programs are incredibly popular across the political spectrum as even large majorities of conservatives and Republicans oppose cuts to them. It is therefore understandable that politicians would use euphemisms to conceal their intentions. However, there is no reason for a newspaper, which has the responsibility of informing readers, to adopt the same euphemism.
A NYT piece on the failure of the supercommittee repeatedly referred to plans to “change” Social Security and Medicare. The supercommittee was not considering random changes to these programs, they were proposing cuts. The purpose was to save money, not make the programs better.
These programs are incredibly popular across the political spectrum as even large majorities of conservatives and Republicans oppose cuts to them. It is therefore understandable that politicians would use euphemisms to conceal their intentions. However, there is no reason for a newspaper, which has the responsibility of informing readers, to adopt the same euphemism.
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This should have been the headline of a front page Washington Post piece on the likely failure of the supercommittee. At one point the piece quotes Hensarling:
“It wasn’t so much of a failure as it was a failure to seize an opportunity. .?.?. This nation better seize another one or we will be in big economic trouble.”
This comment seems to imply that Mr. Hensarling does not realize that we are already in big economic trouble. The unemployment rate has been above 9 percent for most of the last two and a half years and there are no projections showing it coming down any time soon. Tens of million of baby boomers have seen most of their life savings disappear with the collapse of the housing bubble and are reaching retirement with little other than their Social Security and Medicare to support them. Millions of people are underwater in their mortgage and are likely to lose their homes in the next few years.
This is big economic trouble. Apparently, Mr. Hensarling has not noticed these economic developments. This is newsworthy.
This piece is written largely like an editorial. It misrepresents recent events to imply that there was a great urgency for the supercommittee to reach an agreement. For example, it asserts:
“The trigger of automatic cuts should assuage jittery financial markets, which have been on a roller-coaster ride since the summer’s debt standoff in the United States and the struggle to tame even greater fiscal quagmires in Europe. But lawmakers fear that the sentiment of a dysfunctional federal government could solidify and prompt new fear in the global markets.”
Actually, there is little evidence that financial markets were jittery because of concerns about the deficit. The asset most immediately affected by concerns about U.S. government debt is U.S. government bonds (i.e. U.S. government debt). Bond prices have been very high through the last five months, with interest rates hovering near post-depression lows. Stocks have taken a hit, but this is most likely from concerns about a double dip recession in the United States caused by weak demand and the risk of a meltdown in the euro zone. In other words, the markets have acted in exactly the opposite way as would be predicted by deficit hawks.
This should have been the headline of a front page Washington Post piece on the likely failure of the supercommittee. At one point the piece quotes Hensarling:
“It wasn’t so much of a failure as it was a failure to seize an opportunity. .?.?. This nation better seize another one or we will be in big economic trouble.”
This comment seems to imply that Mr. Hensarling does not realize that we are already in big economic trouble. The unemployment rate has been above 9 percent for most of the last two and a half years and there are no projections showing it coming down any time soon. Tens of million of baby boomers have seen most of their life savings disappear with the collapse of the housing bubble and are reaching retirement with little other than their Social Security and Medicare to support them. Millions of people are underwater in their mortgage and are likely to lose their homes in the next few years.
This is big economic trouble. Apparently, Mr. Hensarling has not noticed these economic developments. This is newsworthy.
This piece is written largely like an editorial. It misrepresents recent events to imply that there was a great urgency for the supercommittee to reach an agreement. For example, it asserts:
“The trigger of automatic cuts should assuage jittery financial markets, which have been on a roller-coaster ride since the summer’s debt standoff in the United States and the struggle to tame even greater fiscal quagmires in Europe. But lawmakers fear that the sentiment of a dysfunctional federal government could solidify and prompt new fear in the global markets.”
Actually, there is little evidence that financial markets were jittery because of concerns about the deficit. The asset most immediately affected by concerns about U.S. government debt is U.S. government bonds (i.e. U.S. government debt). Bond prices have been very high through the last five months, with interest rates hovering near post-depression lows. Stocks have taken a hit, but this is most likely from concerns about a double dip recession in the United States caused by weak demand and the risk of a meltdown in the euro zone. In other words, the markets have acted in exactly the opposite way as would be predicted by deficit hawks.
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That should have been the headline of a Washington Post piece on the future of the Bush tax cuts. The piece quotes Grover Norquist as saying:
“And GOP strategists say the White House’s position makes the president vulnerable to charges that he would impose what many Republicans are already calling the ‘biggest tax increase in American history’ if reelected. ‘We’ll run against their tax increase,’ said GOP anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, ‘and we’ll crush them.'”
President Obama is not proposing the biggest tax increase in history. He is proposing ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of the population. This is not even close to the biggest tax increase in history.
If the Republicans make the charge that it is the biggest tax increase in history then they are not telling the truth. They apparently believe that the media will allow them to get away with making a lie the centerpiece of their campaign.
That should have been the headline of a Washington Post piece on the future of the Bush tax cuts. The piece quotes Grover Norquist as saying:
“And GOP strategists say the White House’s position makes the president vulnerable to charges that he would impose what many Republicans are already calling the ‘biggest tax increase in American history’ if reelected. ‘We’ll run against their tax increase,’ said GOP anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, ‘and we’ll crush them.'”
President Obama is not proposing the biggest tax increase in history. He is proposing ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of the population. This is not even close to the biggest tax increase in history.
If the Republicans make the charge that it is the biggest tax increase in history then they are not telling the truth. They apparently believe that the media will allow them to get away with making a lie the centerpiece of their campaign.
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Medicare costs are projected to soar over the next two decades, more than doubling as a share of GDP. This means that anything you put together with Medicare in a sentence will also have explosive growth, such as “Medicare and national park maintenance are projected to more than double as a share of GDP over the next two decades.”
For this reason, honest people don’t lump together other programs, like Social Security, with Medicare. Social Security’s costs are projected to rise at a much more modest pace and, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, these added expenses will be fully covered by the Social Security trust fund through the year 2038. But, we don’t expect honest discussion from Robert Samuelson.
The problem with Medicare is of course the broken health care system. If the United States paid the same amount per person as people in other wealthy countries then we would be facing long-term budget surpluses, not deficits. While reforming the U.S. health care system is difficult, there are enormous potential gains from trade. However, the Washington elite are such ardent protectionists when it comes to the incomes of their friends in the health care industry, they will not allow the issue of promoting trade in health care to even be considered.
It is also worth noting that the tax plan put forward by Senator Patrick Toomey, which Samuelson touts in this piece, would imply huge tax cuts for the highest income households compared to a situation where the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, which is current law.
Medicare costs are projected to soar over the next two decades, more than doubling as a share of GDP. This means that anything you put together with Medicare in a sentence will also have explosive growth, such as “Medicare and national park maintenance are projected to more than double as a share of GDP over the next two decades.”
For this reason, honest people don’t lump together other programs, like Social Security, with Medicare. Social Security’s costs are projected to rise at a much more modest pace and, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, these added expenses will be fully covered by the Social Security trust fund through the year 2038. But, we don’t expect honest discussion from Robert Samuelson.
The problem with Medicare is of course the broken health care system. If the United States paid the same amount per person as people in other wealthy countries then we would be facing long-term budget surpluses, not deficits. While reforming the U.S. health care system is difficult, there are enormous potential gains from trade. However, the Washington elite are such ardent protectionists when it comes to the incomes of their friends in the health care industry, they will not allow the issue of promoting trade in health care to even be considered.
It is also worth noting that the tax plan put forward by Senator Patrick Toomey, which Samuelson touts in this piece, would imply huge tax cuts for the highest income households compared to a situation where the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, which is current law.
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