Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

I Do Not Think "Tool" Means What You Think It Does

Dear Brad, Do you want to reconsider the title of this post in the context of this article? An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall […]

JOHN C. DUGAN…OCC carries on

rdan John Dugan speaks: TESTIMONY OFJOHN C. DUGANCOMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCYbefore theCOMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRSUNITED STATES SENATEMarch 19, 2009 It would not have the benefits of onsite examination and supervision and the very real leverage that bank supervisors have over the banks they regulate. That means, we believe, that compliance is likely […]

We Elected a Reformer, Not an Avenger…a different take on torture

rdan Update: The thread devolved into rants on the part of some instead of making a point. Such writing dimishes whatever your position happened to be. Post from The Bell hat tip run75441 “Joshia’s Example” We Elected a Reformer, Not an Avenger. Then Josiah the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah […]

Define rich!!!!!!!!

(I’m broadening the discussion now.)by Divorced one like Bush Define rich. Define rich! Define rich? That’s the come back every time the issue of raising the income tax on the rich come up. What is unsaid is: Go ahead. Define rich. I dare ya! (Triple dog dare at that.) Fine. I’ll accept the challenge. But, […]

Clearly a Commie-Symp Terrorist

Who said: The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the [1984 UN Convention on Torture] . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States […]

1981-1983 Social Security Commission: Myths and Realities

by Bruce Webb (Update 2 : Deleted Update 1.) Currently there is a lot of discussion about forming a new bipartisan Entitlements Commission modeled in part on the ‘Greenspan Commission’ of 1981-82 and partly on the Base ReAlignment Commission (BRAC). The idea is that you get people to agree on ‘Crisis’, then get a ‘bipartisan’ […]

Emanuel Saez wins the Clark Medal

This is excellent news. One important aspect is that Saez is very reality based, that is empirical. As you have noted from time to time, the economics profession has had a very high opinion of theory in which results are rigorously derived from clearly false assumptions. Saez is, as far as I can tell from […]

Peter Dorman of Econospeak Writes, So I Don’t Have To

I’m just going to “Go Thoma” on him, since I can’t find anything to cut: Barack Obama tells us we should not investigate American intelligence agents or their overlings who are responsible for torturing hundreds of suspects in their custody. We have to forget about the past, he says, to concentrate our attention on the […]

Vanishing Surpluses-Yet Again

by Bruce Webb Last month we were delivered alarming news from AEI: Slowdown Slashes Social Security Surplus illustrated with the table above in turn derived from this source SSA-Trust Fund Data. And sure enough if you followed the link and inserted Feb 2009 that is exactly what you would see. But what if you put […]