Don Luskin nitpicks himself into a corner again with another attack on Paul Krugman that also goes after Peter Orszag. He notes that Krugman argued: when you divert some of your Social Security payroll-tax dollars into a personal account of the kind that President Bush is proposing, the government is effectively making a loan to […]

From CNN: OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) – President Bush, on a campaign-style road trip to pressure recalcitrant Democrats and reluctant Republicans on a Social Security overhaul, warned Friday against “scare tactics” in the burgeoning debate. The president decried the kind of opposition campaigns now being waged against his proposals, saying they mislead seniors into thinking they […]

Jobs were created in January on net, but not as many as one might have wished for, according to the BLS: Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 146,000 in January and the unemployment rate decreased to 5.2 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job growth continued in several […]

As posed by Josh Marshall: The Social Security Trust Fund now has accumulated roughly $1.8 trillion worth of US Treasury bonds. That total debt of the United States government is, if memory serves, just over $7 trillion. US Treasury bonds are owned by Americans, foreigners, individuals, pension funds, everybody under the sun. Most of the […]

After Andrew Samwick noted an interesting query as to the Baker-Krugman logic, Luskin decides he has to hurl insults at Dr. Krugman: Krugman states that the return on stocks from dividends and share repurchases is 3 percent. He states that “profits grow at the same rate as the economy,” and notes that “economic growth … […]

By the time I awake tomorrow, Kash is likely to have posted the employment report for the first month of this year. For reasons noted below, I’m HOPING employment increases a lot this month and every month for the year. Hoping but not forecasting. Greg Mankiw of the CEA is forecasting employment growth of only […]

Andrew Samwick summarized the blog reaction to Krugman’s latest NYTimes oped the same even that the oped ran. Andrew was kind to my musing about the Solow growth model after he offerred his insights, which I do agree with: The critical assumption in the Baker/Krugman example is that the dividend yield doesn’t rise above a […]

Where’s the pressure to change the US’s creaking health care system? I simply do not understand how this country’s leading politicians continue to avoid political pressure on this issue. Take a look at this selection of today’s news stories: Health care is a problem for the middle class: Study: Health costs spur bankruptcy Half of […]

Here’s Bob Somerby, unfortunately only describing (as opposed to either transcribing what was said, or saying it himself on NPR or CNN) what a talking head or expert should say when confronted by the “worthless IOUs” claim: RECOMMENDED ANSWER [to the “worthless IOU/How can the government repay the trust fund” sophistry]: Easy! Almost surely, the […]

Paul Krugman writes in his latest New York Times oped: To get a 6.5 percent rate of return, you need capital gains: if dividends yield 3 percent, stock prices have to rise 3.5 percent per year after inflation. That doesn’t sound too unreasonable if you’re thinking only a few years ahead. But privatizers need that […]