Hiring Finished 2014 Strong in December

Good jobs report today.  An article on it can be found here.  Best year for hiring in many years.  There are still concerns over labor force figures and earnings.

Lazear of "Scoring" of Legislation

Ed Lazear has an op-ed in the WSJ today concerning Congress' requiring the CBO to "score" legislation for economic growth.  To this point, the CBO has not done that on the grounds it wants to maintain an unbiased position. But, as Lazear points out, to not consider the effects on growth is to bias things in favor of passing legislation.  He offers several reasons why scoring is a good idea, and how it can be done while maintaining objectivity.

Hypocrisy at Harvard?

An interesting article in yesterday's NY Times.  Some of the economists at Harvard helped design the Affordable Care Act. One result has been an increase in costs of their insurance to Harvard faculty, and many don't like it.  According to some health care economists, Harvard still has a very generous package.  The article quotes a Classics professor, who said the changes are, "...deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university."  Much of the unhappiness is in the humanities faculties.  It is interesting when people who want expanded coverage for the country complain so bitterly when it generates a little higher costs for themselves.

Lawrence Tribe on the Clean Power Plan

Lawrence Tribe has an interesting op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal. He argues that the plans the EPA has to regulate power plants in the states is unconstitutional.  While he agrees with the desire to limit carbon emissions, he says this approach is unconstitutional.

On Oil Prices

The price of crude oil has plunged in recent weeks, and there is both concern and rejoicing over the drop.  The rejoicing comes from consumers as well as many retailers who hope that the increased cash in the hands of families will increase spending at the mall.  The concern comes from business and some government officials, who worry that the drop will exacerbate concerns for deflation. Some are debating whether the drop in oil prices is due to supply forces or demand forces.

Prices are determined by the countervailing forces of supply and demand, but movements as large as recent movement of oil prices seem to be difficult to attribute to a change in demand or supply.  A couple of things should be kept in mind.  First, there has been a huge increase in supply, especially from increased production in the U.S.  The increase is due to technological change involving fracking and other techniques that have enabled companies to produce oil from sources they could not in the past.  On the demand side, the world economy is still sputtering, and China's growth rate has fallen.  But both of these forces have been in place for awhile, which would suggest a more gradual decrease in prices than we have observed.  This brings me to the importance of expectations.  Prices reflect both today's realities as well as expectations about the future.  Expectations can change rapidly, and probably have in this case.

Expectations affect both sides of the market.  On the supply side, some OPEC members (primarily Saudi Arabia), seem convinced that the increased supply in the U.S. is not a fluke.  But, they also know that the costs of extracting oil are higher in the U.S. than in the Middle East.  Processes that are profitable at $80 a barrel may not be at $40.  U.S. producers will not change production immediately because it is costly to do so and because oil prices can rise quickly too.  Saudi Arabia has stated that they are willing to maintain production even if oil prices fall further.  I presume they are taking the long view and hoping that over time the growth of U.S. production will slow down or reverse.  Given the large number of producers now who are not part of OPEC, they may be overestimating their influence on oil markets today.  On the demand side, expectations may be that there will not be a big increase in demand for awhile since Europe seems to be stagnating and China could not keep growing at double digit rates.

Finally, what about the concern for deflation.  According to Milton Friedman--inflation (or deflation) is always a monetary phenomenon.  Changes in oil prices are relative price changes and do not cause all prices to change in the same direction.  However, oil is an extremely important input into almost all goods since goods have to be transported.  Further, it is likely that central banks no longer have as much control over the money supply as they used to have due to technological changes in banking and more open economies.  Still, if the Fed does nothing in response to the oil price changes, the reduced prices for oil should generate increased in demand for some other goods as disposable income increases.  It is a change in relative prices, after all.  However, oil prices have more impact on policymakers than prices of most goods.  So, the Fed is likely to feel they must react in some way because they are concerned about deflation.  The experience from the 1970s and rising oil prices was that the Fed accommodated higher oil prices by increasing the supply of money and generating more widespread inflation.  Hopefully, some lessons were leaned from the 1970s and Fed reaction can be more muted today.

Recovery at Last

Paul Krugman's op-ed in yesterday's NY Times is an interesting mix of ideology and philosophy fallacies.  He is writing about the jobs report from Friday, noting that we finally have a good report.  Maybe we have recovery at last.  It still isn't great and the stimulus package from early in the Obama Administration was not enough, as he repeatedly argued, but finally we get good news.  Also the report refutes critics who said that the slow economic recovery was due to regulations and new programs like Obamacare.  Since Obamacare is in place and we now get the good news, clearly it didn't have a negative effect.  Here is the fallacy where because one thing precedes another there is a relationship among them.

More than this, Krugman never considers the possibility that the economy's self-correcting tendency eventually would generate recovery.  The last recession was particularly difficult and the buffers people have were depleted in some cases.  The drop in housing prices impacted many households.  Further, we had over built residential construction in the run up to the recession, so time would have to pass before a real recovery in housing could take place.  The improving economy has little to do with government activist policies and much to do with the natural tendencies in a market economy.

One more related note.  I saw a clip of Pres. Obama this morning talking about all the jobs he has created over the last 50+ months.  I don't care whether a Republican or Democratic president uses such language--it is wrong.  Presidents don't create jobs.  What a president along with Congress can do is create an environment in which people and businesses can flourish.  But the only jobs they create are government jobs.

On Obama's Pledge on Keeping One's Policy

There has been a lot of discussion about whether President Obama lied or not concerning his pledge that no one who liked their policy would lose it.  It not a lie, it certainly was disingenuous.  I have seen Robert Reich quoted as, "The Affordable Health Care Act allow insures to continue offering their old plans, but many insurers are choosing not to. I other words, the Act isn't the culprit; the insures are. Obama is being skewered for failing to warn Americans what they should already have known: that the market for private insurance is totally unreliable."

Washington Post "fact checker", Glenn Kessler, traces out the history of the claims.  See here.  He shows that the statement would not be true for anyone who obtained their policy after the Act passed, yet the pledge continued.  The rules of the Act were written so as to encourage insurance companies to drop the policies--any change, no matter how small--to a "substandard" (and cheap) policy would eliminate it status as grandfathered in.  Further, new policies like it would not be permissible so insurers have every reason to end the policies.  The writing of the Act was done in a way to strongly discourage any policies remaining for long that did not meet the standards of the Act.

It is a little like when I joined the Navy after completing college.  It was voluntary and my decision. Of course, there was also a draft and I would have been drafted into the Army. So, while technically true that the government did not force me into the Navy, it would be disingenuous to claim that the government didn't coerce me into entering military service.