The Year Ahead: Economic Surprises

Paul Solman: Another dauntingly thought-provoking group of responses today as part of our week-long series on The Economic Year Ahead (yesterday’s feature on the next crisis garnered some particularly interesting contributions). Today’s question: What economic development in 2010 would surprise you most?

I admire Lynn Stout’s sly way of endorsing what’s often called a “Tobin tax” (after Yale Nobel economist Jim Tobin, who proposed such a tax years ago, though only on currency trades). For what it’s worth, I’ve read arguments on both sides and find Stout’s claims compelling.

And speaking of personal connections to today’s posts, Richard Sylla lays out in some detail a point that came up in the Caplin Conference at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center last week: that a retreat from stimulus and/or higher Fed rates could choke off any recovery a la 1936-7. At that conference I mentioned: John Maynard Keynes’ private letter to President Roosevelt in 1938. It’s posted here by Berkeley’s noted economist, economic historian and blogger, Brad DeLong.

Finally, our old friend Barry Schwartz, around whose Paradox of Choice thesis and book we built what remains one of my favorite pieces for the NewsHour. Any web post by Barry, or that contains the phrase “the great biologist Jakob von Uexkull” in its first sentence, is worth reading, if only to test your memory by trying to spell the great biologist’s name after you’re done.

Read the full feature here.