Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Commenting on Thoma commenting on Blanchard commenting on Lucas

Robert Waldmann Mark Thoma has a long post on the end of the Fresh Water Salt Water truce. He quotes at length from Olivier Blanchard’s declaration of peace in our time. In particular from Blanchard the old fresh water/salt water distinction has become largely irrelevant: While research on the topic started with new-Keynesians, recent research […]

for the non economists

rdan A background for the non economists concerning freshwater and saltwater economists harks back to 1976 when Robert Hall christened the central schism in macroeconomic thought as being between the freshwater and saltwater schools. The division was picked by their location (on the Great Lakes and Rivers versus the coastal schools). The division exists today […]

The ‘illions, by volume, area and time

by reader Noni Mausa The ‘illions, by volume, area and time If a millionWas a walnut A billionWould be three ice cream pails A trillionWould be my spare bedroom====If a millionCould be covered by a man’s handkerchief A billionCould be covered by a 1500 square foot bungalow A trillionWould be 25 acres – 33 football […]

Two comments on Kling

Arnold Kling doesn’t support the stimulus, but he doesn’t agree with fresh water critics either. He refers to Mankiw’s classification of macroeconomists as “scientists” and “engineers” then writes Because the data are not powerful enough to reject any hypothesis against an interesting alternative, the macroeconomic “scientists” divorced themselves from the “engineers,” who continued to use […]

Will the stimulus package be a pork fest?

by Bruce Webbreader Buffpilot in comments insists the answer is clearly yes on the grounds The Dems, have NEVER, shown fiscal responsibility when in charge of the purse strings (or at least since before LBJ). So you have zero track record to back you up on thinking that the Dems will suddenly cut back government […]

CBO Director Testifies on Economic Impact of HR1

by Bruce Webb Movie Guy further requested some discussion on CBO Director Elmendorf’s testimony to Congress from yesterday. The whole text is here Elmendorf testifies before House Budget Comm I didn’t have time to thouroughly review the whole thing but these tables were interesting enough to put up for comment.

CBO Letter to Rep. Ryan re Stimulus Debt Service

by Bruce WebbReader Movie Guy suggests that the following letter and table merit some discussion. It seems to speak for itself but the whole thing is short enough simply to post (I deleted some returns and added some commas to save space, the original PDF is here CBO Letter to Rep. Ryan). Please add any […]

WHITE HOUSE Communications:

reader Movie Guy WHITE HOUSE Communications: White House Press Pool Report No pool reports filed yet. EXECUTIVE ORDERS and PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA The White House President Obama delivers Your Weekly Address The White House Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 5:55 am MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL […]