Better Analysis Please

Contrary to the Seattle Times headline, Seattle area prices did not decline 11.2% in November. And you'd have to go to the PI to learn that the Seattle-area as defined by Standard & Poors includes King, Snohomish and Pierce counties.

This is not to minimize the devaluation of houses. But suburban and rurals homes are losing value by an order of magnitude more than Urban houses. Including these very different areas together shortchanges the very real pain the snohomish and pierce counties are feeling. And it overstates the situation in Seattle.

Of course I am listening to NPR were the announcer just stated that economists believe that tax cuts are better stimulus that spending. This may be true of commercial economists, but then again the have a structural incentive to believe that (since they work for companies that want tax breaks) and , as Nate Silver docments, have a consistent track record of being wrong.

Among most Academic Economists there is very little debate that spending is better than tax cuts* (Nate started doing an analysis here). The real skepticism is whether even the more effiecient spending will be enough or whether conventional monetary tools still exist..


*Some notable Academic Economists like Mankiw may disagree, but when I read or hear their arguments they rest on Niggles, i.e. debating points about specific projects that are wasteful, rather than arguments about whether spending in the aggregate is more efficient than tax cuts or rebates in the aggregate.