The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) hosted its inaugural conference this weekend at King’s College Cambridge, an experiment of sorts. I had the pleasure of attending the conference, my first time to Cambridge. John Maynard Keynes wrote his *General Theory* at King’s College. And as if that wasn’t enough, I dined with blogging legends, […]

China’s March trade deficit Patrick Chovanec on Seekingalpha asks the basic question on the direction Chinese policy makers will take regarding the currency question, but the underlying question remains unanswered… What tipped this month’s figure from a marginal surplus to a deficit was a surge in imports, up 66% from last year. But it’s going […]

Lifted from comments. Before they cut our paid for stuff, I think we need to “Audit the Government”. Not sure if anyone in Congress, Treasury, or Federal Reserve is up to the task. As far as the annual budget goes, I always see those pie charts where they make SS, Medicare and Medicaid look like […]

Robert Waldmann Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein come very close to accusing Alec Litowitz of the Magnetar hedge fund of being a financial arsonist. I have been speculating about financial arson for a year and a half now. The hypothesis is that Magnetar deliberately set up especially low quality CDOs and bought CDS insurance on […]

by Bruce Webb Well this is a response to a question in the Rivlin thread. There are widespread misunderstandings about what if anything makes up the “IOUs” in the Trust Funds, with many people thinking they just have artificially low rates (and so obviously underperforming theoretical private accounts) or just are open-ended loosey-goosy commitments to […]

There has been some arguing about the dangers of federal deficit spending (little said about the huge private sector debt levels except on econoblogs), but Kevin Drum on Mother Jones notes in a post how the argument appears to be framed in the public’s mind no matter which party or movement is involved: Ah, the […]

Robert Waldmann Some time ago, I noted the difference between the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which reduces the scheduled generosity of payments to hospitals, nursing homes and home health care agencies and the formula in a 1997 bill which was supposed to reduce the generosity of payments to doctors and which is […]

by Linda Beale Alice Rivlin spoke at Wayne State University’s FOCIS forum today on the economic crisis. Rivlin is an economist who served as the first director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83, when she was a critic of “reaganomics”), director under Clinton of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (deputy 1993-94, director 1994-96) […]

Robert Waldmann is still trying to get Paul Krugman to read my answer to his question. Krugman explaines the neo-Austrian view of the business cycle and unemployment during recessions and asks “why isn’t there similar unemployment during the boom, as workers are transferred into investment goods production?” I answer (in comments and here) I think […]