During the late stages of the NASDAQ bubble, several commentators suggested raising margin requirements to dampen stock speculation. Senior FED Economist Simon Kwan responded with an Economic Letter concluding: “…the effectiveness of using margin requirements as a policy tool is questionable. Investors can use financial derivatives to obtain exposure to equities without owning stocks, and […]

Kate O’Beirne was one of Russert’s guests this morning. At first she whined that the special prosecutor has been at this investigation for two years (actually he should have been at this two years ago) – and then she suggested it was someone else who first leaked Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent. Her […]

If you are a young worker worried about all those deferred taxes being built up by the Bush Administration and the GOP led Congress, I guess the good news is that Congress has left town. Before they left, they passed a pork-filled energy bill as well as added all sorts of pork to the highway […]

I owe our readers a follow-up to this post. While Chad accused me of cherry picking the time frame with the suggestion the labor compensation to national income ratio for the late 1990’s was somehow an anomaly, Liberal was kind enough to suggest I provide a chart starting around 1960. It seems Brad DeLong has […]

Lawrence Kudlow has found his own excuse for letting Rove off the hook: Let’s hope we don’t lose the strong pro-growth advocate we have in Karl Rove. Oh my – if Rove resigns, we may actually have to pay for all that Federal spending instead of having the kids foot the bill!

With hat tip to Brad Setser, Edmund Andrews reports: Mr. Hayes, a Republican whose district in North Carolina has lost thousands of textile jobs in the last four years, had defied President Bush and House Republican leaders by voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or Cafta. But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, […]

The preliminary estimate for 2005QII indicates that real GDP is growing at a 3.4% per year. With consumption demand growing at a 3.3% rate and government purchases growing at a 2.0% rate, one might react to his news with a big ho-hum. As one that has been hoping for a reversal of the bad news […]

Kipesquire inquires about the impact on national savings and is concerned that AmeriSave is not fiscally neutral. His Broken Windows Fallacy raises an important point: if the government lowers my net taxes but not does cut government purchases, there will be an increase in someone else’s net taxes either now or later. Kip, however, makes […]

Did Jonathan Swanson read Kash’s post? He replies with some odd logic: Too bad the solution does not address the Social Security shortfall, nor does it provide a feasible investment strategy for the demographic group it targets … one can benefit from the wonder of compound interest only when one has disposable income to invest. […]

Cliff May thinks so: On Fox a moment ago, liberal radio talk show host Nancy Skinner said that Karl Rove “is endangering our national security” – her short-hand reference to the Wilson/Plame brouhaha. So the left, which is always shouting: “How dare you question my patriotism!” to people who are not questioning their patriotism is […]