Deborah Solomon of the New York Times interviews former Senator Connie Mack on tax reform: Q: Can you tell us about the report the tax-reform panel will be filing on Nov. 1? It’s been reported that you’re hoping to reduce some popular tax breaks, including the deduction for home mortgage interest from a $1 million […]
Initial reports suggest that Bush is going to make an announcement this afternoon nominating Ben Bernanke to be the next Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. This is actually a pretty good choice, I think. (Full disclosure: he was one of my professors in grad school, so I accept the […]
I rarely comment on the Iraq debacle on this blog, but I feel that this week’s events require me to do so. Today or tomorrow, most likely, we will pass a very grim milestone: the total number of Americans killed in Iraq will reach 2,000. This milestone will undoubtedly make some minor headlines, and serve […]
This week’s news will probably be dominated by Wilma and Fitzgerald. And the top economic story will likely be Q3 GDP. But I’ll also be looking at the Existing Home Sales and New Home Sales reports for further clues of a housing slowdown. Expectations are for strong volumes for both existing and new home sales. […]
Kevin Drum unloaded on Scott McClellan and President Bush for their opposition to raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25: Whoa, Nelly! Sure, it’s been eight years since the last increase to the minimum wage, but even so an increase of $1.10 over an 18-month period might “price people out of the job market.” […]
Mark Kleiman reads David Brooks and explodes: David, it’s not a matter of “not fully coherent” or lack of an “unorthodox management style”: its that every single thing his administration has turned its hand to, except lying to win elections, it’s trashed! Bush and his people suck at vision, suck at making reasonable plans, suck […]
Mark Thoma’s Snow Falls Silent in China links to an interesting article from Edmund Andrews. As John Tamny steals Mark’s title (“Snows Falls on China”), he writes: A frequently cited anecdote about England’s economic decline in the ’70s is the irony of countless Rolls Royces moving through the streets of London. At the time, savings […]
The Office of Special Counsel has its own website. Dan Froomkin discusses the implications.
In this week’s issue The Economist wonders to what degree one country’s rate of inflation is no longer determined by local forces, and instead is determined by global economic forces: With energy and labour becoming conspicuously dearer, any inflation model based on a mark-up of prices over costs should be flashing red. Yet in the […]
One of my complaints about our replacement governor in California is that he loves to talk about deficit reduction but is unwilling to raise taxes and incapable of significantly reducing spending – although the slate of propositions he has put on the ballot are designed to reduce our investment in public education and to reduce […]