Policy commentary from an econ, data science, and comparative politics perspective
The easiest and most painless way to save money is to simply save 100% (or at least most) of every raise that you get. It is much easier to maintain a lifestyle at a certain level of spending than it is to reduce your spending. This also goes for if you are a college or… Continue reading What Are the Best Ways to Save Money?
It depends. If you have credit card debt, paying that off is the best. Other debt would need to be compared to your mortgage debt based on interest rates, whether they adjust (and if so, where you think interest rates may go throughout its life), whether they have a balloon payment, tax deductibility, flexibility of… Continue reading Is Paying My Mortgage Off Earlier the Best Financial Decision I Can Currently Make?
There are three prevailing theories: 1) insurance 2) political pressure 3) market pressure. Regarding the first theory, Fed chair Jerome Powell may be trying to pull off what Greenspan did in 1995 and 1998. Powell has characterized both the rate cut in July and the most recent one in September as “insurance.” What he means… Continue reading Why Did the Fed Lower Interest Rates If the U.S. Economy Is Doing Well?
The fiscal authority is Congress (along with the president), which passes budgets regarding federal taxation and expenditures. In economics, these types of actions are called fiscal policy, which means Congress is the fiscal authority. Tax cuts and increased spending can stimulate an economy to fight unemployment, and the opposite actions can cool it down to… Continue reading What Does It Mean When “The Monetary Authority Is Financing the Fiscal Authority”?
(image via The Democracy Labs) One idea is to reform corporate governance away from focusing narrowly on shareholder interests and instead take into account the interests of broader stakeholders. As defined here, stakeholders are “any third party that has some level of dependence upon the corporation” and can include employees, customers, suppliers, and the larger… Continue reading What Do You Think Is the Best Way to Improve Corporate Behavior So as to Prevent Things Like the Opioid Crisis?
(image via the Federal Reserve Economic Data) Someone on Quora asked if index/passive funds are the new subprime CDOs, perhaps implying that there could be an index fund asset bubble. My answer? Absolutely not. CDOs (collateralized debt obligation) are rather opaque, whereas index funds are much more transparent, particularly exchange-traded funds (ETFs). (image via MoneyControl)… Continue reading Are Index / Passive Funds the New Subprime CDOs?
Image from goodreads.com I consider All the Devils Are Here to be the best book on the financial crisis I have read so far, edging out Nouriel Roubini's Crisis Economics and significantly better than Michael Lewis's excellent Big Short. Roubini excels more at explaining more of the economics in systemic big-picture terms and also laying… Continue reading Review of All the Devils Are Here
Hey all y'all, Well, life is strange. Five years ago, I was a software engineer in the Silicon Valley, taking economics classes to transition to a new career that, at the time, I thought would be public policy. A summer in D.C. and a couple of trips to Burning Man, and well, that plan went… Continue reading (Re)start Me Up
In regards to the big Supreme Court decision on Romneycare Obamacare, there's been much hand-wringing on how this is a tax on doing nothing. This does seem odd, until you realize that a penalty or tax on one group but not on a second group is economically identical to having no penalty or tax on the first group but a tax credit… Continue reading The Economics Behind the Individual Mandate
Things you have done during your lifetime: (X) Gone on a blind date( ) Gone on a date with someone who was blind(X) Gone on a date with someone who was blind and you stole food off their plate( ) Gone on a date blind because there was a bucket over your head(X) Had a… Continue reading The Bucket List Meme
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