Some Links

1. BusinessWeek's Small Business Blog offers up a slideshow of 20 entrepreneurship writers you should follow on twitter.
2. The TaxProfBlog on donating and deducting gift cards to charity
3. James Hamilton has a fascinating new paper looking at the Taylor Rule. In his blog post about the paper he finishes by looking at Fed policy before and after 2000 (Econbrowser):
   

   We document two important changes in the perceived policy rule over time. After 2000, the market believed that the Fed would eventually have a stronger response to inflation than it had prior to 2000, but also that the Fed would take longer to implement those changes, responding to news more sluggishly than it had before 2000.
   
   We study the consequences of these changes using a simple new-Keynesian model. We find that the first change (a stronger long-run response to inflation) would be something that would have made output less variable, whereas the second change (a smaller immediate response) would have made output more variable. According to these simulations, increased Fed inertia undid some of the benefits it could have otherwise obtained with its anti-inflation policies.
   
   Our conclusion is that the measured pace at which Greenspan increased interest rates over 2004-2005 may have been counterproductive, and that economic performance might have been improved if the Fed instead had raised interest rates more quickly to the higher warranted levels.