Max speaks and we should all listen: There are no tax cuts. Banish that phrase from your mind. You haven’t seen any. Republican control of the White House and Congress has yielded trillions in tax increases since January of 2001. How can this be? Simple. When you spend more, and when you pass laws that […]

James Hamilton provided an interesting discussion of monetary policy in advance of today’s FED decision with some good links that did not include Mark Thoma: Thus, according to the CBOT 30-Day Federal Funds futures contract, there is a 100% chance the target rate will increase .25% to 3.50%, and a 9% chance it will increase […]

Cokie Roberts on ABC’s This Week suggested that the Novak blow-up showed that we need a “press shield law”. It seems the WSJ op-ed folks have sounded a similar theme: we warned that the media would regret their demand for a special counsel to discover Mr. Novak’s sources, since that same counsel would eventually turn […]

Brad DeLong catches Donald Luskin failing to understand that “deficit” means the annual increase in “debt”: When an American (1) labors or invests to earn money, (2) chooses to spend that money on foreign goods, and (3) the foreign maker of those goods doesn’t spend that money on American goods, somehow debt is created. I […]

Dr. Paul Krugman writes in Monday’s NY Times: This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss. Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even […]

CNN/Money reports: On average, homeowners have 56.3 percent equity in their homes, according to Demos, a public-interest research group. In 1973, equity averaged 68.3 percent; in the 1950s, it was upwards of 80 percent. Two main factors are at work: Homeowners are starting off further behind. In the past, the standard downpayment was 20 percent. […]

Mark Thoma listens to the President’s Saturday morning address so we don’t have to – and provides this link: ”The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. “The increased revenues and our spending restraint have led to good progress […]

For a sample of the coverage of the walk-out, see Josh Marshall. Of course, the folks over at The Corner are blaming James Carville for Novak’s childish behavior. Now remember kids, when a right-winger misbehaves, always find some liberal to pin the blame upon.

The Employment Situation report for July 2005 has several pieces of good news. Payroll employment rose by 207,000. The increase in employment as measured by the household survey was enough to have the employment to population ratio rise to 62.8% from 62.7%. The unemployment rate did not change as the labor force participation rate rose […]

I should have but I did not follow that special Congressional election in Ohio that carefully. But I did watch a couple of Ohio Republicans on the Wednesday edition of Hardball. One was Jean Schmidt who strikes me as a Karl Rove puppet only capable of repeating the talking points: The people in Ohio are […]