● A Vice President in the research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis responds to the attacks on the central bank via one rather prominent critic in Congress: Ron Paul’s Money Illusion
● The case for arguing that QE2 worked: Quantitative Easing and America’s Economic Rebound
● Scott Sumner also argues that QE2 succeeded: Feldstein–>Glasner–>Feldstein
● But Mark Thoma thinks it’s too early to say for sure: Long and Variable Lags in Monetary Policy
● Meanwhile, central bankers aren’t completely immune to learning from history: An historical perspective on the Great Recession
Daily Archives: March 3, 2011
Is The Stalled Decline In Jobless Claims Really Over This Time?
Was that a tipping point for the trend in jobless claims? Today’s update of weekly filings for new unemployment benefits shows a drop to a seasonally adjusted 368,000 for the week through February 26. Initial claims haven’t been this low since May 2008. Today’s number also marks another milestone since the end of the recession: the first back-to-back weekly readings below 400,000.
Carving Up Betas Is Only A Partial Solution
More is better when it comes to asset allocation, at least in theory. But how much is too much? Common sense suggests that there’s a point of diminishing returns to dividing up portfolios into ever finer slices. Exactly where that point lies is unclear, however. That’s partly because analyzing widely divergent portfolio choices rapidly spins out of control as a quantifiable research project intent on dispatching a few concise insights. Reviewing the infinite, in other words, doesn’t help much in the search for one-size-fits-all advice.