Mark Thoma links to a story from the Poughkeepsie Journal where apparently the Poughkeepsie crowd was more impressed by Paul Krugman than Michael Tanner – despite Tanner’s usual spin: Tanner called for allowing workers to invest their share of the annual Social Security payroll tax surplus, which, he said, would put an end to the […]

Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer entitled their article U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in […]

The wingnuts have tried to pin the blame on 9/11 on Bill Clinton – with the latest phony tale being “Able Danger” ala Curt Weldon. Kevin Drum links to a few of these wingnuts over at the National Review’s The Corner. John Podhoretz claims he did not believe Weldon’s tale until he read this AP […]

…where have you been? Why aren’t you posting anymore? Well, like Kash, I’m enjoying the summer while also trying to get a lot of work and reseach done. Also, I’ve been on about a six week pool bender, as I try to get ready for a big tournament that starts soon. And finally, it seems […]

Brad DeLong reads John Tamny and somehow retains the clarity of thought to realize something Ben Bernanke picked up on that we also discussed: Bernanke’s point is that in the second quarter households, the government, and investing businesses bought one-half percent more goods and services than U.S. producers made and U.S. businesses (net) imported. Thus […]

Brad DeLong catches James “DOW 36000” Glassman complaining about Paul Krugman being a stalker: “By the way, none of the tumultuous events of the past six years has changed our minds about our thesis. In fact, despite terrorist attacks and a recession, price-to-earnings ratios have remained high, in historic terms, just as we predicted…” We […]

Via Mark Thoma comes an interesting discussion from The Economist as to why interest rates are low: The most popular explanation is that there is a global glut of savings, which has driven yields down … If desired saving increases relative to investment (ie, there is excess saving), the IS curve shifts to the left […]

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs was the title of an op-ed by Robert Barro just before the 1992 election. While Barro was not about to endorse either Clinton or Perot, he opened his op-ed by blasting President George H. W. Bush for suggesting increasing Federal spending was necessary to create new jobs. It seems that the current […]

Mark Thoma focuses on what Ben Bernanke has been saying recently, while Brad DeLong noted what he did not say: He apparently failed to stress two important things: Bush administration fiscal policy is way out of balance in the long run, and this is a very serious problem: if the government doesn’t balance its budget […]

The only things that I remember about the movie Coyote Ugly are: (1) it was an awful movie; (2) it featured some rather attractive young women; and (3) one of them loved to scream “at least it doesn’t suck”. Max Sawicky seems to say the same thing about the U.S. economy: Whatever its merits, the […]