Free exchange

Our Asia economics editor gives us his report on the G20 summit and why leaders pushed Theresa May for a 'soft' Brexit. Alexandra Suich, our US technology editor, discusses Uber's plans to transform the world of personal transport. And our Schumpeter columnist tells us why companies should cherish introverts.

LARRY SUMMERS is right; this year's Fed symposium in Jackson Hole was triply disappointing. In the weeks before the gathering, members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) publicly discussed their worries that the current monetary framework might leave the Fed unable to deal adequately with future slowdowns. They got our hopes up: enough that we published a leader giving the Fed some suggestions for new approaches. But as Mr Summers says, the Fed let us all down. In their public remarks, at least, the FOMC members present expressed little concern about problems with the Fed's toolkit or weaknesses with the current 2% inflation target.

Henry Curr talks about the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole and why they are discussing a change to inflation targeting. And Soumaya Keynes and Ryan Avent round-up the best economic blogs this month - how does the sharing economy impact niceness? Andrew Palmer hosts.

Economic blog round-up

Blogs on commodification and niceness:

• Branko Milanovic's original blog link
• Diane Coyle response link
• Milanovic's response link

Blogs on rates of return for public investment: 

• Tyler Cowen on the opportunity cost of government borrowing link
• Brad DeLong response link
• Tyler Cowen response link
• Noah Smith response link
• David Beckworth on the safe asset shortage link

FACING a difficult decision? Toss a coin. It will change your life.

This is the message from a new working paper, by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago (the Freakonomist), which suggests people are too cautious for their own good. And he isn’t talking about the small-stakes decisions economists usually analyse—he is focused on big life choices, like whether to quit a job or end a relationship.

Working out whether people would be happier if they moved away from the status quo for big life decisions is tough.

OFFICIALS at the Federal Reserve, a few of them anyway, seem to be rethinking their views of the economy in some dramatic ways. In a new blog post, however, Ben Bernanke suggests that Fed watchers shouldn't overstate the radicalism of the intellectual evolution within the Fed. Top policy-makers still have confidence in their mental model of the economy; they have just been tweaking a few of the parameters within that model, he says. In particular, the Fed's long-run projections for GDP growth, the unemployment rate and their benchmark interest rate have all been revised down (see table).

As Mr Bernanke notes, these revisions change the outlook for rate rises in slightly different ways.

IT IS morning in America as, according to the newest figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the economy added 255,000 new jobs in July, after a red hot June in which payrolls rose by 292,000. Truthfully it's actually late morning, or the morning has been around for a while at any rate, since July was in fact the 70th consecutive month of employment growth, which is pretty good. Granted, things looked dicey just two months ago, when only 24,000 new jobs were added. Yet America seems to have put that hiccup behind it. The thoughts of officials at the Fed would surely be turning to how soon they can raise interest rates again if ever they were anywhere else.

THIS week, Democrats are meeting in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton as their candidate for the presidency. In between the speeches, party business, musical acts and other convention agenda items, the party has been airing short, funny little videos, starring former members of Barack Obama's economic team. Here's one that ran last night, featuring Gene Sperling, who most recently served as the director of Mr Obama's National Economic Council:

Comically, it's not bad. Politically, it maybe works, or maybe it doesn't; who knows. But economically this is a little funny. Donald Trump has all sorts of disastrous economic ideas, such as they are.