Two interesting articles

Two interesting pieces in the business section of the NY Times yesterday. Mankiw's column illustrates the effects that higher taxes on high-income earners can have on work effort. He uses himself as a case study. An article on the historical gains of the stock market after the midterm elections provides astonishing data. The article writes about the data from the perspective of it being the third year of a presidential term, but data I received from a former student showed that the 200 days after the midterm election consistently had high returns while the 200 days prior to the midterm elections returns were much lower, with many years showing negative returns. It is difficult to know what to make about the data.

Bad News and More Bad News

The government announced that the GDP figures for the third quarter have been revised downward again. (See WSJ article on it here.) The original estimate that was released in mid-October was 3.5% annual growth rate. It was revised down to 2.8% in November and now revised again to 2.2%. That is a substantial change in the figures. One thing it shows is that we should be cautious in our declarations about the strength or lack of strength of the recovery based on preliminary figures. A country hungry for good news in October jumped on the robust estimate. It is still positive growth, but more in line with the concern felt by many that unemployment will take a long time to return to levels we observed earlier in the decade.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that the decade of the '00s has seen the worst performance by the U.S. stock market for any decade, even worse than the '30s.

Hopefully, there is no where to go but up.