L'inesorabile discesa dei tassi. Krugman e il Times all'attacco.

Quanto possono ancora scendere i rendimenti delle obbligazioni governative USA? Secondo il New York Times
Rates keep falling, and Wall Street increasingly seems convinced that they will stay low for years. But it isn’t the Federal Reserve that is cutting them — it is the bond market. The weak-kneed economy has investors piling into United States Treasury securities, driving prices up and yields down.
(...) rates are unlikely to turn higher soon, economists say. In fact, they could fall even further. While the Fed cannot lower its official federal funds rate much more — that rate has been stuck at 0.25 percent all year — it can ease credit in other ways. On Wall Street, a consensus is forming that the Fed might take less conventional steps, like buying more Treasury securities, to push market rates lower still.
(...) William H. Gross, a managing director at Pimco, the giant bond fund manager, said the jobs report strengthened his argument that the economy and the job market would remain weak for the next few years. He calls his unhappy situation “the new normal” for the American economy. “Currently, financial markets have accepted this thesis, the best evidence of which is the two-year Treasury yield at 0.50 percent,” Mr. Gross said in an e-mail. “If investors expected the Fed to raise rates at any time in the next two years, the yield would be much higher.”
Like Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Gross expects the federal policy makers to consider other steps, besides lowering rates directly, to try to revive growth. The Fed, for its part, will probably keep the fed funds rate at 0.25 percent for two to three years, he said.

Alla debolezza dell'economia U.S.A. il NYTimes  dedica anche un editoriale che invoca a chiare lettere azioni di sostegno per l'occupazione
The economic news — on growth, consumers, housing and manufacturing — was bad enough before the jobs report for July, released last Friday. The report leaves no doubt that a slowdown is well under way. The odds of renewed recession remain uncomfortably high.
And yet, the response from Washington has been inadequate, at best, with Democratic initiatives too timid and Republicans bent on obstruction. When legislation does emerge from the gridlock, it is invariably a disappointment in the face of a dissolving recovery.(...)
With unemployment persistently high, the economy is losing whatever momentum it had after last year’s stimulus. Recovery, such as it is, appears to be a repeat of the lopsided growth of the Bush years, with corporate profits rebounding and jobs and incomes lagging. Back then, policy makers advised patience, saying that with time, economic gains would distribute themselves more evenly. We know how that ended.
There is no one way to foster job growth. There are many ways, and they should all be deployed. Maybe after Congress gets back from vacation. 
Sempre dal NYTimes di ieri Paul Krugman attacca senza mezze misure l'inerzia del governo e i fautori di una politica di bilancio rigorosa: 
The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.
We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. (...) We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.
In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.
It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.