Scott Sumner
Seeking Alpha
United States
Contact Scott
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Scott:
Where Is The Money Going?
Nominal interest rates plunged from 2.5% to zero during the Covid crisis of March 2020, and nominal interest rates rose sharply during 2022. Click here to read more. → Read More
Is Employment A Lagging Indicator?
There seems to be a widespread view that employment is a lagging indicator of changes. How true is this? Click here to find out. → Read More
Some Thoughts On European Monetary Policy
The US is quite overheated, but the Eurozone picture is a bit more complicated. A falling unemployment rate really cannot go on forever. Read more. → Read More
It's Services, i.e., It's NGDP, i.e., It's Monetary Policy
Stocks plunged today because core inflation is worse than expected, and that’s mostly services. → Read More
Still Overheating?
If we assume the key macro problem is business cycles created by nominal shocks interacting with sticky wages, then aggregate wage income may be a better cyclical indicator than NGDP. → Read More
Monetary Policy Isn't What You Think It Is
Most people judge monetary policy in terms of the level of interest rates. More sophisticated pundits suggest that you need to look at the expected path of interest rates over time. → Read More
How Much Nominal Overheating?
NGDP is up 12.4% over the past 9 quarters, an annual rate of 5.3%. That’s too high. I usually focus on NGDP out of sheer laziness, and also because it is normally quite similar to NGDI. → Read More
How much of the inflation is excessive?
The Fed’s preferred PCE price index has averaged 4% inflation since January 2020. So, there’s a total of roughly 5% excess inflation over the past 2 1/4 years. Read more here... → Read More
How Do We Know That Money Is Getting Looser?
Ideally, we’d have a highly liquid NGDP futures market. Unfortunately, we are still in the Stone Age of macroeconomics. Read more here. → Read More
Not Your Older Sister's Recession
Almost all recessions in the US are due to demand shocks. So when a bona fide supply shock (aka real shock) comes along, we don't know what to make of it. → Read More
Is COVID's Impact Semi-Permanent?
It seems likely that COVID-19 will be over long before 2025, so there seem to be some semi-permanent effects. Maybe trend growth is slower than we assume. → Read More
The September Retail Sales Shocker
The government just announced that retail sales surged 1.9% in September, way above expectations. In a normal recession, retail sales plunge sharply and take years to fully recover. → Read More
Another Example Of Monetary Offset
It became clear in late July that Congress was unlikely to extend the stimulus, Keynesian pundits went into full freakout mode, warning that the recovery would be aborted. → Read More
Disposable Income Is Not Holding Back The Economy
In the Keynesian model, fiscal stimulus boosts demand during a recession by making up for the decline in disposable income during a period of falling GDP. → Read More
Way Too Tight
The Fed's new inflation and unemployment projections show that monetary policy is currently way too tight. Unemployment is projected to remain high through 2022 → Read More
How Do We Know Something Is True?
Forget about the stimulus checks, I'm interested in the question of whether Americans are struggling. Is that true? In a country of 330 million people, there wi → Read More
One Cheer For Yield Curve Control
It's a mistake for the Fed to try to reduce long-term interest rates. Lower interest rates are not, by themselves, expansionary. Two reasons why I cheer for yie → Read More
Why Are Stocks Doing Well?
I’d like to consider some possible reasons why stocks have rallied to relatively high levels by historical standards, despite an economy that appears headed for → Read More
Build The NGDP And Businesses Will Come With The Goods And Services
One misconception in the media is that it may be difficult for the economy to recover once the medical crisis is over, because firms have gone bankrupt. US econ → Read More
TIPS Spreads Are A Big Problem
In the entire investment universe, there is no asset that measures risk-free ex-ante real interest rates more accurately than TIPS. Now, it is true that the TIP → Read More