Economists have long been fascinated by a 1930 essay written by John Maynard Keynes called "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" (available various places like here and here). Writing in the opening storms of what would become the Great Depression, Keynes maintained that the main issues facing the economy in the long run was an adjustment to ongoing technological progress. He wrote: "We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing-pains of over-rapid changes, from the painfulness of readjustment between one economic period and another." He added: "I would predict that the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day. There would be nothing surprising in this even in the light of our present knowledge. It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of afar greater progress still."
Emerging market currencies have suffered from US interest rate increases. The Dallas Fed proposes reserve/GDP ratio as a simple indicator of stress. If tightening is nearly complete their may be buying opportunities in EM stocks.
Those of us who write about economics can only nod knowingly at a comment from John Maynard Keynes in 1934, in a a fragment of writing that was probably part of a draft of the preface for the General Theory. He wrote:
Renee Haltom interviews Jesse Shapiro on the topic of media bias and political bias in Econ Focus, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (2nd Quarter 2017, pp. 24-29). The entire interview is worth reading, but here are a few points that caught my eye. The headings are my words, and the explanations are Shapiro.
Douglas Clement has a characteristically excellent "Interview with Lawrence Katz" in The Region, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, published September 25, 2017. The subheading reads: "Harvard economist on the gender pay gap, fissuring workplaces and the importance of moving to a good neighborhood early in a child’s life." The interview offers lots to chew on. Here, I'll just pass along some of Katz's thoughts on a couple of points.
Joan Robinson, in her book Economic Philosophy (1962, pp. 26-28), offers a meditation on how Adam Smith perceived poets and mathematicians-- and then on how economist fall in-between. Her argument is that mathematicians have an agreed-upon method for evaluating errors. Poets do not. And economists fall in between--which introduces a personal element into all economic controversies. In the passage that follows, I'm especially fond of two of her comments:
The phrase "child labor" conjures up such ugly images for me that it's hard to discuss it dispassionately. But the International Labour Organization has a recent report, "Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and Trends 2012-2016" that offers some useful facts and distinctions.