Robert Waldmann Nate Silver, like essentially all election handycappers, ignores internal polls — polls financed by one of the candidates or by the party of one of the candidates. Unusally, he explained why noting that even if the polls are unbiased there is extreme publication bias as campaigns release the polls if and only if […]

Robert Waldmann is pleased to note that he was right and that Paul Krugman and Joeseph Stiglitz were wrongggg. They claimed that PPIP was a huge giveaway, because purchases of toxic assets would be 85% financed by no-recourse loans from the FDIC. I noted that this financing would only be available if the FDIC (not […]

Robert Waldmann Krugman not considered a competent data downloader in the Newspaper which employees him. Writing about the new slashed budget proposed in the UK, Landon Thomas Jr sees invisible bond vigilantes ” bond market demands to follow through on promised austerity plans.” If this means anything it means that, before the announcement of the […]

Robert Waldmann A new Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard poll of US opinions on the role of government reminds me that actual people in the US have progressive views on the role of government. click to enlarge commentary after the jump. Of course part of the issue is that people want the Federal government […]

Robert Waldmann Alternative title: Stimulus without Congress. Many argue that the Fed should buy long maturity and/or risky assets in order to reduce interest rate differentials. According to 사설 토토사이트 reports, the Federal Funds rate is essentially zero, but interest rates which matter are still significantly positive so more could be done by some huge […]

Robert Waldmann Mike Kimel just remarked that Keynes was in no way responsible for the incorrect impression that the Phillips curve graphs the set of unemployment and inflation rates available to policy makers. In a comment, I said he was totally correct. In fact, I’d go further and argued that Keynes warned against that mistake […]

Robert Waldmann Mark Thoma linked to a post at my personal blog about the history of economic thought 101, what did Keynes write in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.” So I guess my next effort at humiliatingly elementary history of thought should be here. After the jump. When contemporary economists speak of […]

Robert Waldmann The entire blogsphere seems to be fascinated by the idea that maybe the IRS could mail tax payers a receipt showing where their taxes go. Oddly the IRS just decided to stop mailing something — 1040 booklets. Which, you guessed it, explain where your tax money goes. This has been mailed to every […]

Robert Waldmann D. Keith Johnson, a former president of Clayton Holdings, a company that analyzed mortgage pools for the Wall Street firms that sold them, told the [financial crisis inquiry] commission on Thursday that almost half the mortgages Clayton sampled from the beginning of 2006 through June 2007 failed to meet crucial quality benchmarks that […]

Robert Waldmann Majority Whip James E Clyburn proposed extending the Obama tax cuts. Some assert that he means the Bush tax cuts on income under $250,000. I sure hope he means that Obama tax cuts. I have been arguing for some time that the Democrats should propose permenent extension of the Bush cuts on income […]