Konczal on monetary policy

Did the Federal Reserve Do QE Backwards? by Mike Konczal

It would have been nice for a journalist or Congressperson to have asked Bernanke. This is why they wanted to get out of QE ASAP.

O'Brien on QE

Why the Fed is giving up too soon on the economy by Matt O'Brien

Kockerlakota and the North Dakota oil boom

Kocherlakota dissents. I believe his turn about first came when he visited the North Dakota "man camps" of the oil boom.

Oct. 29 FOMC statement:

Voting against the action was Narayana Kocherlakota, who believed that, in light of continued sluggishness in the inflation outlook and the recent slide in market-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations, the Committee should commit to keeping the current target range for the federal funds rate at least until the one-to-two-year ahead inflation outlook has returned to 2 percent and should continue the asset purchase program at its current level.

'The Overnighters' shows dark side of North Dakota oil boom

Her

Joaquin Phoenix turned 40 today and I just watched his film Her by Spike Jonze. It was really good and has some great actresses and actors in it: Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara, Scarlett Johansson, Olivia Wilde, Amy Adams and Matt Letscher.*

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* Letscher was the father in the Carrie Diaries with Annasophia Robb who in turn was in the saddest movie ever. He also plays the fascist Joe Kennedy on Boardwalk Empire.

DeLong: productive vs. extractive

Very Rough: Exploding Wealth Inequality and Its Rent-Seeking Society Consequences: (Early) Monday Focus for October 27, 2014 by DeLong

What I would like to see Emmanuel and Gabriel guess it is the share of wealth that is productive–that boosts the productivity of the working class and that shares those productivity benefits with workers–and the share of wealth that is extractive–that are pure claims on income rather than useful instruments of production, and thus that erode rather than boost the incomes of others. Wealth plays two roles, you see: as useful factors of production that boost productivity, and as extractive social power that is the result, the cause, and the maintainer of the rent-seeking society.