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Greg Ip
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Greg Ip
@greg_ip
Chief economics commentator for The Wall Street Journal. A fox, not a hedgehog. Read my articles here: https://t.co/EAV42eSvPW
Washington, D.C. Katılım Ocak 2011
831 Takip Edilen81.4K Takipçiler
How high does oil have to get for recession probability to top 50%? $138. That's the average answer in our latest survey of economists, who generally see an increase in inflation but little impact on growth from the Iran war. wsj.com/economy/econom…
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Does this quick multiplication feel ballpark right, given where we are?
Jeff Stein@JStein_WaPo
SCOOP: The Pentagon asked the White House today for more than *$200 billion* for the Iran war supplemental, sources say Some White House aides think Congress won't support b/c it's so big Will tee up giant battle in Congress
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Greg Ip retweetledi
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if infrastructure like this 👇 gets blown up, as of this moment it will take at least a decade to recover from this war - and the truth is that the world's energy picture is probably changed forever.
This single facility 👇produced roughly 20% of global LNG supply (aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/18…) and, as of 2011, had taken $70 billion to build (energyintel.com/0000017b-a7be-…).
What makes this even worse is that Iran's strike on this was retaliation after Israel attacked their South Pars gas field which draws from the same natural gas reservoir, which is the world's largest by far (9,700 km² - about the size of Qatar itself).
Heck, on the list of the 25 largest natural gas fields (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n…) this single reservoir holds roughly 40% of their combined recoverable reserves - and is nearly 6 times bigger than the 2nd biggest field in the world. And, unlike many of the others on the list, it's only at 10% depletion (meaning 90% of the gas is still there).
Which means that, probably for many years, a huge share of the gas from the world's largest reservoir simply won't be extractable, as infrastructure on both sides - Qatar's and Iran's - has now been blown up.
From a global energy supply perspective, we're deep into worst-case scenario territory.
QatarEnergy@qatarenergy
QatarEnergy Statement on Missile Attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City QatarEnergy confirms that Ras Laffan Industrial City this evening has been the subject of missile attacks. Emergency response teams were deployed immediately to contain the resulting fires, as extensive damage has been caused. All personnel have been accounted for and no casualties have been reported at this time. QatarEnergy will continue to communicate the latest available information. #Qatar
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My boring take, as a so-far failed vibe coder: AI is more likely to keep lots of software developers employed making way more , and better, software than ever, than to put them out of work because we consume the same amount of software as before, delivered by fewer people.
Guy Berger@EconBerger
4/ My boring take as a non-software-developer is these jobs will exist in the future and that they will be very different from the past. I don't know how many there will be. This incipient recovery *may* be the early innings of that transformation.
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Greg Ip retweetledi
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A possible explanation:
Because monetary policy is not actually restrictive, because wage growth etc imply that nominal growth expectations are "too fast" for 2% inflation, and because the labor market is not loose enough to change any of this
Greg Ip@greg_ip
. @NickTimiraos stumps Powell. Why hasn't non-housing services inflation moved down, esp without tight labor market? "Good question...frustrating ... bunch of idiosyncratic things...One of the things we should be seeing ... it's a good question ... "
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@ernietedeschi @mtkonczal @M_C_Klein I still think unit labor costs of 1-1.5% last year ought to give you some basic optimism about inflation returning to target.
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@mtkonczal @M_C_Klein @greg_ip I mean, none of this is normative! It's just the math of: conditional on a 2% target, if NHS is higher than 2018, something else has to be lower! Housing will do a bit of work here but probably not enough.
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Greg Ip retweetledi
@M_C_Klein @ernietedeschi @greg_ip Greg, here's some measures from the early 2000s.
For the 2002-2003 period, as Matt notes, core goods is a strong downward force, taking -0.46% off headline. But even then services were contributing less (in part because, on the right side, it had slightly less weight then).
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Greg Ip retweetledi
@greg_ip @mtkonczal Yes I was talking about total. I also do not think that the earlier period you cite for non-housing services is relevant because it coincided with massive manufactured goods deflation in part attributable to China shock (what Powell might call a "one-time thing")
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@M_C_Klein @mtkonczal I assume you're referring to total PCE (3 the new 2), right? I was merely pointing out that non-housing services inflation always runs above total PCE inflation, and its level today is not significantly out of line with on-target inflation.
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@mtkonczal @greg_ip I would be fine with "3 is the new 2" if a) everyone were else were fine with, but seems like not and b) the "3" were credible, as opposed to the gateway to "4 is the new 3" given everything that has been happening in the past 15 months
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More and more people are starting to sound like @MichaelRStrain
Mike Konczal@mtkonczal
@greg_ip @M_C_Klein I did a pass at this here. I was not really worried 6 months ago but am more worried now. Non-housing services measures have really gone the wrong way in the past 3- and 6- months (in addition to a not great year-over-year) even before the war with Iran. newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/even-before-…
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Oh right. Well, that thesis misconstrues what Greenspan did, anyway. Productivity was a reason not to hike, as opposed to a reason to cut. And hawks wanting to hike cited unemployment falling below NAIRU, not GDP growth. Then later in the 90s, Greenspan did tighten, arguing in part that higher productivity growth required a higher natural interest rate.
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@greg_ip Productivity boom and lower r star so “pull a Greenspan” and cut!
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On the other hand, should we be that worked up about the current reading on non-housing services inflation? x.com/greg_ip/status…
Greg Ip@greg_ip
@M_C_Klein Non-housing services inflation (red) is north of 3%, but is that really that big a deal? It was this level in the early 2000s as well when overall PCE inflation (green) was 2-2.5%.
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. @NickTimiraos stumps Powell. Why hasn't non-housing services inflation moved down, esp without tight labor market? "Good question...frustrating ... bunch of idiosyncratic things...One of the things we should be seeing ... it's a good question ... "
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@greg_ip Interesting that the longer-run estimate of the federal funds rate also went up. Not exactly consistent with the "Golden-Age" thesis.
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Greg Ip retweetledi
Today’s example of why SCOTUS got the tariff decision right. Trump would 100% be imposing chaotic tariffs on NATO allies today if he still had IEEPA tariff powers. (Instead, USTR is using ordinary trade laws to develop trade-related tariffs, as Congress intended).
Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial@TruthTrumpPost
(@realDonaldTrump - Truth Social Post ) ( Donald J. Trump - Mar 17 2026, 11:18 AM ET ) The United States has been informed by most of our NATO "Allies" that they don't want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran, in the Middle East, this, despite the fact that almost every Country strongly agreed with what we are doing, and that Iran cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a Nuclear Weapon.
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