Trouble By Summer? It looks like that renowned leftist rag, BusinessWeek, agrees with Kash: Yet the market fiesta could be fizzling — and not only because of negative reaction to the Fed’s post-meeting statement, say some Wall Streeters. The central bank had made a nuanced shift in expressing how soon it may be considering a […]

What are We Getting for Our $535 billion? As Kash noted earlier, the projected price tag for the Republican Medicare reform has shot up by a third, from $400b to $535 billion. Now is as good a time as any to remind everyone that the coverage seniors get under this plan is fairly meager. For […]

What’s New It’s Friday, which means that Bob Park’s newsletter, What’s New, is out. One item this week is the deficit: BUDGET: HOW TO BRING DOWN AN OUT-OF-CONTROL BUDGET SURPLUS. When George W. Bush took office he was confronted with a looming $5.6 trillion surplus over the next decade (WN 9 Mar 01). OMB turned […]

Is the Recovery Fading Already? The BEA just released their first estimate of economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2003 (October through December). The overall number for GDP growth is a solid 4.0% annual rate. However, that is below what many economists had been expecting. One part of the report that’s discouraging is that […]

By the Way, When We Said “$400 Billion” We Really Meant… Shocking, just shocking. I am shocked and surprised. Really. CNN: President Bush’s new budget will project that the just-enacted prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul will cost one-third more than previously estimated… Instead of a $400 billion 10-year price tag, Bush’s 2005 budget will […]

Alphabet Soup From the Alpha Quadrant I’m not actually sure where the Alpha Quadrant is, but based on this DeLong post, it must be somewhere near Berkeley. Here’s my favorite paragraph: And every single senior Republican economic policy appointee comes out of a look back at the past three years looking very badly. X fails […]

Where’s the Fork? You’ve likely heard that Dean fired his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, yesterday. The more surprising news, news I hadn’t heard until today in Salon, is that he’s out of money too: According to staffers, Dean held a meeting with campaign workers in which he announced that there was no money to pay […]

Pre-War Intelligence Inquiry? David Kay is now advocating an independent investigation: David A. Kay, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, called on Wednesday for an independent inquiry into prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, but he said he did not believe that the Bush administration had pressured intelligence analysts to exaggerate the threat. […]

The Causes of the Budget Deficit: A Reckoning In case you missed it yesterday: There seems to be some disagreement about the true cause of the US’s current budget woes. Conservatives blame it on federal spending, which they claim has risen too fast. The Bush administration, on the other hand, blames the state of the […]

Tariffs and Jobs The bloggers over at The American Street are supposed to be focusing — sometimes, but not exclusively — on swing states. While Michigan is very likely to vote Democratic, the margin was still too narrow for comfort: 51%-46%, with 2.6% other (mostly Nader, I suspect). On second thought, if Nader voters comprised […]