Imagine this site redone in crimson and blue …
I thought that the KU Jayhawks had a shot to comeback from their mini-slump late in the second half that allowed Memphis to open up a lead when Collins stole an inbound pass late in the game and then hit a three from the corner to cut the lead to four. I thought the Jayhawks had a shot when CDR (Chris Douglas-Roberts) missed two free throws late in the game. I also thought that they lost their shot when KU couldn’t rebound the Douglas-Roberts miss. But Derrick Rose only made one of two, Collins somehow passed the ball to Chalmers as he was falling down, and then Chalmers hit THE SHOT.
When Texas won a national title in a sport that folks down in Texas tend to think matters, I seem to remember that someone over at Angry Bear painted the Angry Bear site Texas orange. I don’t have the same ability to change RGE’s color scheme, but if I could, I would.
Commentary on less important matters will resume soon.
I’m just waiting for David C’s comment.
You should really do an in depth post around the recent Greenspan debate. Greenspan is defending his record by saying that the credit crisis was caused by the global savings glut. His detractors blame easy Fed policy for the crisis, along with lax regulation. Implicit in this is that they don’t buy into the global savings glut thesis. Your views seem more aligned with Greenspan. Please do a post.
I do think there was a global savings glut (really a savings glut in China and the oil exporters) — and that put downward pressure on interest rates and upward pressure on asset prices (especially those in the not tradeable sector) in both the us and europe. That said, I thought this pressure stemmed not from the work of the market, but from policies abroad. And Greenspan’s reaction was generally to view the rise in the us deficit/ fall in us savings as a natural response to financial globalization (which allowed more dispersion between savings and investment)and thus to downplay the risks associated with allowing policies that maintained large savings surpluses and undervalued exchange rates to persist. My sense is that he generally tended to downplay the role of the “official sector” in sustaining the US deficit. I also believe that the US should have responded to the conundrum with policies that tightened rates more and thus policies that paid more attention to the impact of rising housing prices on aggregate demand — i.e. i didn’t view the housing bubble as a positive development. So on net, I am not terribly sympathetic to Greenspan’s argument despite agreeing that it wasn’t just us policy that created the housing/ credit bubble. I don’t the us monetary response to those global forces was quite right.
You might also consider doing a post on Greg Ip’s WSJ piece today, regarding the potential techniques available to the Fed in order to sterilize further expansion of its balance sheet, if required - e.g. paying interest on reserves; leaving Treasury balances at the Fed; issuing other types of sterilization liabilities, etc. This is a fairly hot topic these days and these methods are used by other central banks.
Anonymous — good idea. i have been meaning to do something on the expansion of the fed’s balance sheet. the imf weo data tho may provide other sources of fodder. and then there is my day job.