This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Paul Krugman (The New York Times): Interest rates: the phantom menace, November 20, 2009. Well, what I hear is that officials don’t trust the demand for long-term government debt, because they see it as driven by a “carry trade”: financial players borrowing cheap money short-term, and using it to buy long-term bonds. They fear that the whole thing could evaporate if long-term rates start to rise, imposing capital losses on the people doing the carry trade; this could, they believe, drive rates way up, even though this possibility doesn’t seem to be priced in by the market. What’s wrong with this picture?

• Michael Panzner (Financial Armageddon): Economists: wrong again, November 21, 2009. As if they didn’t cause enough

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This was another week when everybody but me sees an economic recovery in the works.

Certainly Thursday's report of a 0.1% decline in U.S. retail trade and food services sales for July was a disappointment. Dan Greenhaus explains why he found the number startling:

The cash for clunkers program was expected to have had quite an effect on retail sales. However motor vehicle and parts rose only 2.4%; expectations had looked for a gain more than double. Sales at auto and other motor vehicle dealers were up just 2.8%, a healthy gain to be certain but far less than many economists expected. The initial impression is that, perhaps, some of the cash for clunkers sales will find their way into the August data.

The auto numbers are indeed surprising, since we know directly from industry counts that the number of autos sold in the U.S. was up

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Some are greeting Friday's employment report as an all-clear signal. But my advice is, keep your helmet on-- they're still shooting real bullets out there.

Let's start with the good news. I first called attention to the favorable turn in new claims for unemployment insurance on April 9, noting that in each of the previous 6 recessions, an economic recovery began within 8 weeks of the peak in new claims. On May 7, I concluded we had enough statistical evidence to predict with 85% confidence that new claims for unemployment insurance had indeed peaked at the beginning of April. Although there was some concern as to whether seasonal adjustment could be confounding the July readings, it's pretty clear now that the substantial decline in new claims is the real deal.

Black line: 4-week average of seasonally adjusted weekly initial claims for ...

Peter Schiff: Why this Money Should Replace the U.S. Dollar There’s a new universal currency, backed by solid gold. You can use it to make online purchases anywhere in the world. Converting some money to the new currency takes just 5 minutes. You can start with as little as $10…or as much as $10 million. According to CNBC star analyst and Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, this money could double the value of your savings – automatically – in just 6-9 months. For Schiff’s full analysis and recommendations, please go here.

U.S. GDP Contraction Slows, but the Road to Recovery Will Be Rocky

By Bob Blandeburgo
Associate Editor
Money Morning

While the many of the world’s economies continue to look for signs of growth, the U.S. economy took a big step in the right the direction in the second quarter.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 1% in the second quarter, …

Peter Schiff: Why this Money Should Replace the U.S. Dollar There’s a new universal currency, backed by solid gold. You can use it to make online purchases anywhere in the world. Converting some money to the new currency takes just 5 minutes. You can start with as little as $10…or as much as $10 million. According to CNBC star analyst and Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, this money could double the value of your savings – automatically – in just 6-9 months. For Schiff’s full analysis and recommendations, please go here.

While the many of the world’s economies continue to look for signs of growth, the U.S. economy took a big step in the right the direction in the second quarter.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 1% in the second quarter, following the first quarter’s 6.4% drop. The $787 billion Obama stimulus package, smaller decreases in business spending …

The CBO has posted an actual "cost estimate" on HR 1 (not just a partial examination of Division A, as explained in the Director's Blog, the locus of great disinformation in previous discussions, as recounted by Dean Baker). Here is a graphical depiction of what CBO believes will be the impact on the deficit (once again, recalling that there is an explicit omission of repercussion effects on tax revenues and transfers that would arise from elevated aggregate demand; in other words, this is the estimated impact on the full employment budget balance).

Figure 1: Estimated spending and tax revenue reductions, per fiscal year, embodied in HR 1. Shaded areas pertain to spending occurring outside of the 20 month time frame. Source: CBO, Cost Estimate of HR 1 (January 27, 2009).

The breakdown of appropriations and estimated spending is to be found in the

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It's been frustrating to me that so much virtual ink has been spilled about why the fiscal package will or will not be effective, with so little clarity. Lots and lots of words are being thrown around, [1] [2] when a lot of the arguments can be summarized pretty easily in terms of four cases, and hence four graphs (I won't deal with the fifth, in detail). There are numerous excellent critiques; here in the interest of specificity, the exposition will be fairly dense.

1. With prices predetermined, the interest sensitivity of money demand is zero, or the income sensitivity of money demand is infinite.

2. With prices predetermined, the interest sensitivity of investment or the sensitivity of net exports to interest rates are infinite.

3. With prices predetermined, the sensitivity of money demand to wealth is high.

4. Output is at full employment levels.

5. Neo-Ricardian equivalence, as put forward by Barro,

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Huge trend reversal: Dollar busts, commodities boom… why, and will it last? Rate cuts round the world… U.S. and China slash, Japan considers. U.S. three months away from “official” recession. Two new bailouts: Who’s lining up for help, plus Uncle Sam’s October tab. Denning and Nelson on beating inflation with the right long-haul stock.

The U.S. dollar fell by its largest percentage in 13 years yesterday.

Et voila, the trend we believe is your friend returned with some impressive steam:

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index popped 5.9% — diddly squat compared with equity moves lately, but still the biggest daily gain for the index since its inception, in 1956.

Alas, despite the rise, the CRB is still down 24%

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Calculated Risk informs us that the national debt is going to surge over $10 trillion today.As of Sept 29th, the debt was $9,945,578,231,981.59Partly to blame is the Supplementary Financing Program (SFP) that the Treasury is using to raise cash for the Federal Reserve's liquidity initiatives. For example, while the bailout package failed in Congress on Monday, the government injected $630 billion into the global financial system.Meanwhile, both Calculated Risk and Econbrowser are pretty sure we're going to see negative GDP in the third quarter.Brad Setzer at the Council on Foreign Relations has an eye-opening visual of the Fed's balance sheet. Since it's good to get opposing points of view, Dean Baker says that a high Libor rate is not a problem. I think it's safe to say that most of Wall ...

I normally leave it to folks like Dean Baker to beat up on the press. But I can't resist shining a bright light on today's story about oil speculators in the Washington Post, which has also been discussed by Mark Thoma and Tyler Cowen.

David Cho opens his story in the Washington Post with this bombshell:

Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses.

But when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel.

Let's start with some background. The CFTC issues a report each week that summarizes the number of open futures contracts in

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