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

Opposing The Social Security Plan That Does Not Exist

Via Duncan Black comes the latest in hypocrisy from the GOP House leadership in what Duncan calls a cute trick with “There is Plan and No Plan” being Duncan’s perfect title. I guess the GOP spin is that they have laid out what the problem is and the broad parameters of how to fix the […]

Garbage from Greenspan

Without a shred of evidence or theoretical justification, Greenspan said this today on Capitol Hill: “Addressing the government’s own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes. However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base. The exact magnitude […]

The Interest Rate Mystery

Samuelson opines about the state of interest rates in the US in today’s Washington Post : The Mystery of Low Interest Rates Something strange happened on the way to higher interest rates: They declined. We’re talking about rates on long-term mortgages and bonds. These rates truly affect the economy, because they influence housing and business […]

House Prices

Yesterday the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) released its quarterly estimate of house price appreciation. The estimate shows that housing price appreciation slowed sharply in the fourth quarter of 2004 compared to the third quarter. Because prices rose so much earlier in 2004, the year-on-year (y-o-y) percent change in house prices was still […]

Respect Regained

How do you recover from Catwoman? Like this: George W. Bush won the “Razzie” worst actor of the year award on Saturday for his performance as president in “Fahrenheit 9/11” but his moment in Hollywood’s dubious spotlight was eclipsed by Halle Berry, who actually turned up to receive her embarrassing accolade. Berry was named worst […]

What’s Wrong with the Bankruptcy Reform Bill?

I asked that question of an acquaintance of mine who is an attorney working for a federal bankruptcy judge. Here is her answer: 1. There are two basic types of bankruptcy in this country: Chapter 13, which means that the individual is put on a strict, court-supervised payment plan with the goal of fully repaying […]