Charles Pierce sums up the true issue: It is on days like this that I don’t envy political economists. They’re the ones that are going to have to take this Message from Goobertown seriously. They’re going to have to score it. They’re going to have to do the math, such as it is, and try […]
Brad DeLong asked a few days ago who he should be reading on a daily basis. Following is a cross-post from my nominee, The Hunting of the Snark: Kudlow’s Komedy Kapers Larry Kudlow is worried that Obama is ruining the economy. Larry KudlowAugust 5, 2011 4:30 P.M. More Obama Spending Won’t Do ItAnd stocks know […]
I won’t post it here—the full text would be so NSFW that Lee Papa might hesitate—but here’s the outline: UPDATE: I was correct about Mr. Papa’s likely reaction being more moderate, but he’s more lucid that Ezra (or Greg Sargent) has been so far today. Of course, “more lucid than people employed by the Washington […]
Mark Thoma, who supported (and probably voted for) the man during the primaries, is dumuch more gracious than I am: A vague promise from Democrats about the future is all but worthless right now, we’ve had too many promises broken already. Obama’s promises in particular mean nothing. The nicest thing I can do is describe […]
This is why Andrew Leonard (h/t Yves Smith) gets paid for blogging and I don’t. He tries to do the impossible: make sense out of Michelle Bachmann’s “economics“: 1) The interest can easily be paid for … Bachmann is making the argument here that the U.S. can choose to pay its creditors — the various […]
If I made this up, you would never believe me: “He informed me by text while he was on the floor,” [Erie County Republican Chairman Nicholas A.] Langworthy said of [New York, State Sen. Mark J.] Grisanti’s Friday vote. “I urged him to stick by his word he had given. The people elected him on […]
Yahoo! News, Tuesday early afternoon Dr. Black, Wednesday, just before noon. Brad DeLong, about fifteen minutes after Dr. Black Me, Monday morning. But this isn’t a “First Mover” claim. It’s a note that there are no “savings” in getting rid of the website. There aren’t even the “registration fee” that applies to private enterprises. Commenter […]
More on the health-care later, but let me be clear: Congressman Paul Ryan’s “plan” is NOT a budget. Budgets show Sources and Uses. As the CBO analysis makes clear, this “budget” is no more a budget than Ryan’s last round of fakery. To wit: The path for revenues as a percentage of GDP was specified […]
As the CUTGO Congress attempts to return to the spending ways of 2001-2008, the parallels grow clearer. A simple table to allow easy comparison of the major initiatives of 2001 and 2011 is presented below.
Bruce has made this point repeatedly. Dr. Black puts it in more direct language: [I]nevitably the Social Security Trustees will, perfectly justifiably, tweak a few assumptions about future economic activity so that there will be a DOOM scenario, an EVERYTHING’S AWESOME scenario, and a “uh oh maybe in about 40 years we will have a […]