Phew! I was starting to worry, but Greenspan tells me that it’s all okay: [T]he Federal Reserve chairman said the record level of debt being carried by American households does not seem to constitute a dire threat to U.S. economic well-being. He did note that high levels of personal bankruptcies gave him pause, as they […]

Joe Trippi promotes a book by Joe Scarborough: Rome wasn’t burnt in a day: The Real Deal on how politicians, bureaucrats, and other Washington barbarians are bankrupting America with a summary that can be found here and includes: In just three years since George W. Bush was elected president, your Republican-run Congress took a $155 […]

The BLS just released the September CPI report. It shows a bit of an uptick in the core rate of inflation (mostly due to an increase in the price of “lodging away from home”), which may be a signal that the economy is at least not weakening further. The rate of overall inflation was also […]

This Meet the Press interview with Ken Mehlman and Bob Shrum is a joy to read. Shrum asked Mehlman several times how Bush plans to pay for his Social Security ideas and each time Mehlman ducked with the usual lame attack Kerry by all those votes for tax increases. But the real fun started when […]

Last week, I posted a table showing average monthly job creation for each year from 1959 to the present (see Job Growth in Perspective, Part I). At the time, I posed the following question: We all know that Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs over the entire course of his […]

Some years ago, I briefly worked in a supermarket produce section. One of my duties was to remove spoiled fruits and vegetables from the display bins, to be discarded or donated to a homeless shelter. The supermarket business is known for having razor-thin profit margins. Grocers face serious liability issues, with slip-and-fall lawsuits alone costing […]

His latest Bush exegesis, Without a Doubt, in tomorrow’s New York Times is online now: Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that “if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.” The […]

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Well apparently, Stewart and Tucker Carlson had a bit of a to-do today on Crossfire. Wonkette reports the following exchange: Tucker: You always scold people like this at dinner at your house? Jon: If they have a show that’s as […]

As a follow-up to Kash’s post earlier, note that the total Federal debt reported as of 9/30/2004 was $7378 billion. Table B-78 of the Economic Report of the President 2004 noted that gross Federal debt was $6760 billion as of 9/30/2003, which means debt rose by $618 billion. It is true that the Economic Report […]

So Republican outrage — outrage, I tell you! — continues to burn. A few points. I’ve said it before, but apparently I need to say it again: if you think “lesbian” is an insult, then you’re probably anti-gay. Or as I wrote in an update to my live-bloggin’ post from debate three: Now to editorialize […]