Robert Waldmann is back to his CDS obsession. Imagine I’m a banker and I have this problem that they tell me I have to mark assets to market. I don’t like that because it makes my stated profits vary and my bonus depends on accounting profits and I don’t like the risk. How can I […]
Post lifted from Barkley Rosser at Econospeak How Bruce Webb And I Helped Save Social Security (Maybe) A few days ago Obama was quoted as saying that “getting entitlement spending under control” would be part of the effort to deal with budgetary problems. Most think he is focusing on getting rising medical care costs under […]
rdan Obama offers These estimates show that all components of the program make important contributions to job creation. The direct spending programs have the largest job bang for the buck. State fiscal relief also has important direct and indirect effects on jobs, and so very strong job bang for the buck. Tax cuts, though they […]
rdan Army Times reports this on the ongoing dilemma of how we treat servicemen from the ME conflicts: In October, a medical evaluation board physician at Bragg recommended that Boyle go through the military disability retirement process for chronic post-traumatic stress disorder — which is supposed to automatically earn him at least a 50 percent […]
by cactus A Question About Gaza I’m trying to understand the situation in Gaza. I understand that Israel manages to exert some control over Gaza’s borders and airspace. Israel has also tried to choke off the flow of weapons into Gaza and this embargo is being blamed for much of the hardship that residents of […]
Robert Waldmann Krugman worries about deflation. He performs a simple calculation Now here’s the thing: the slump of the early 1980s produced the Great Disinflation, which brought the core inflation rate down from about 10 to about 4. This time, however, we entered the slump with a core inflation rate of about 2.5 percent. If […]
Robert Waldmann dares comment on Paul Krugman’s Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Liquidity Trap. Krugman argues that, when we are in a liquidity trap, the fiscal authority should use expansionary fiscal policy to keep the unemployment rate exactly at the NAIRU. Since writing the post, Krugman has been wondering why Obama is so much less […]
Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong boldly attempts to exhaustively list the factors which can affect the value of a fixed income asset. This is some Mac generated i document and I can’t cut and paste. Go here and search for “there are four”. The four are called “default”, “the safe real interest rate”, “risk”, and adverse […]
By Spencer It is hard to find anything positive about this employment report. Maybe the best news is the nominal weekly earnings only fell by 0.3%. Since the peak in employment in November household employment has fallen to 97.7% and isnow worse than the declines in the 1974 and 1981 recessions. Employment growth is worse […]