by Ken Houghton Prefatory Note: I wrote this several hours ago, but we had enough great posts this morning from Robert, Spencer, cactus, and rdan that I scheduled it instead of posting directly. In the interim, the House approved the second bailout bill, which I am already on record as opposing, for reasons similar to […]

Near the end of each month the Treasury Dept releases Trust Fund Reports giving balances to the penny for the previous month. By comparing these balances to the projection in the Annual Reports we can get a rough idea of how Social Security is doing year to date. This year’s Report was released on October […]

by Ken Houghton Paul Krugman presents the optimistic version*: The House will probably vote on Friday on the latest version of the $700 billion bailout plan — originally the Paulson plan, then the Paulson-Dodd-Frank plan, and now, I guess, the Paulson-Dodd-Frank-Pork plan (it’s been larded up since the House rejected it on Monday). I hope […]

by Spencer So much for Sarah Palin’s claim that Republican tax cuts create jobs. In the post WW II era every Democratic President has left office with a lower unemployment rate than they inherited from their predecessor while only one Republican president left office with a lower unemployment rate than they inherited. That was Ronald […]

Rdan The National Children’s Study will examine the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21. The goal of the Study is to improve the health and well-being of children. Watch this video and learn more about the Study. […]

by cactus A Few Questions About Taxes In the past few years, if you pointed out that the Bush tax cuts went primarily to those with high incomes, the response from the right was essentially this: a. those with highest income got the biggest tax cut because they pay the most in taxesb. the high […]

(hat tip Ken) Financial Times reports: In the aftermath of the US Treasury’s decision to seize control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, critics have hit at lax oversight of the mortgage companies. The dominant theme has been that Congress let the two government-sponsored enterprises morph into a creature that eventually threatened the US financial […]

Robert Waldmann I have a very low opinion of economic theory. I think that its survival is the result of a bait and switch where the core principles (roughtly Nash equilibrium) can’t be proven false, because they have no implications, and, given the fact that they have not been proven false, economists attempt to convince […]

NYT lede, 10:57 p.m., 2 October: Gov. Sarah Palin displayed more confidence and fluency than she did in recent interviews as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. attacked her running mate. Nothing soft about that bigotry. (Dissenting view: Brad DeLong) Who knew that Gwen Ifill could be an easier interviewer than Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson. […]

Ken Houghton I’ve been trying not to talk in these terms, but I’m sick, and Walter Jon links to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that puts it out in the open, so let us compare: The problems had emerged around 1870, starting in Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, formed in 1867, in […]