Word: economists
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...Some economists - for now a minority, to be sure - believe the U.S. is at serious risk of a deflationary spiral, even if just a quarter ago, inflation was above the Fed's comfort zone of 2% to 3%. "Compared to Japan's problem a decade ago, this crisis is unfolding much faster and spreading wider due to financial globalization," says Shanghai-based independent economist Andy Xie. A financial system unable or unwilling to lend, a tapped out U.S. consumer, and business now retrenching - and laying people off - all are a formula for possible deflation. What's so wrong with declining...
...good news is that in the U.S. now, as Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, writes, "The ultimate bastion of defense against deflation is a Fed committed to avoid it at all costs." And that's what we have. Study of the Japanese experience became something of a cottage industry for Fed researchers over the past eight years, and the Fed has responded accordingly: lending directly to banks, backstopping the commercial-paper market (which companies use to raise short-term money), trying to bring yields on both long- and short-term maturities down. Further, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke...
...highest growth rates in Europe until recently. But, hit by the global credit crunch and economic downturn, the Baltics are now leading Europe into recession. By some estimates, Estonia's economy may already be shrinking. "There's an Estonian saying: Every party ends in tears," says Maris Lauri, an economist at Hansabank, a subsidiary of Sweden's Swedbank...
...Laughs) Greenspan has also said that the tech industry was the main driver of productivity in the United States in the 1990s, so he can't have it both ways. Or maybe as an economist...
...incipient phase, and that job losses could surpass 2 million in 2009, with unemployment climbing to 8%. "As the economy slides into a deeper recession, it appears we are closer to the beginning of the labor market downturn than the end," wrote the study's co-author, economist Ed McKelvey. "We anticipate a sharper decline in employment in coming months." Reich also quotes 8% as a likely unemployment figure, though he notes that figure excludes job seekers who have given up searching altogether and part-time workers seeking full-time employment. With those segments of the population added, the figure...