The U.S. Conference of Mayors presents a (by no means all-inclusive) list of shovel-ready projects, including $11 billion in Public Transit(over $600 million in demand from Charlotte alone, which recently passed NYC in drive-time to work and has seen its drivers vote with their train passes) and over $30B in Energy projects. Search through it. […]

Via Mark Thoma, Uwe Reinhardt* hits one out of the park on economist’s research abilities: Evidently, in the mind of economists, Lone Ranger C.E.O.’s can make truly astronomical contributions to a firm’s market capitalization, ceteris paribus, which justifies high bid prices for them. Why Lone Ranger C.E.O.’s who have trashed their firm’s market capitalization should […]

by Bruce Webb What do these three things have in common and what possible relevance do they have to the debate over the Stimulus Bill? The short answer is belief systems. Over at Krugman’s blog there was a certain amount of baffled debate over issues connected with the Treasury View. From the outside in these […]

After the first round, I was convinced that Microsoft’s songsmith was at best, a way to produce mash-ups for the tonally impaired. Kieran Healy has convinced me otherwise, with this piece: capitalism in action, set to music: I believe this is what we meant when we talked about “creative destruction,” back in the days when […]

by divorced one like BushUpdated comment at end So, now that the Democratic Party has the majority and the White House, why am I not hearing about the use of the Nuclear Option? I mean, it occurred to me that if there was a way to end the partisan old ways, the Nuclear Option is […]

Brad DeLong has the breakdown of things taken out of the no-longer-possible-to-defend-as-stimulating stimulus bill. Nice to see that no Republican, and precious few Democratic Senators, believe in following even Andrew Samwick’s tepid endorsement: Congress and the Obama Administration should be very discriminating in what they will spend money on. Bailout money for banks and large […]

McClatchy via their Planet Washington web page brings us a list of what actually got cut from the Senate bill. And the title pretty much tells the story (though I will be adding a few words later). What the Senate’s cut: Funds for states and schools Here’re the cuts, according to Sen. Leahy’s office. Based […]

What is infrastructure? Some people seem to have a working definition that limits to highways and bridges. Others would expand it to include anything built of concrete and steel. Well that is a little too narrow a view. Instead we should include pretty much all public capital goods in that definition. So in addition to […]

I’ve said before that the “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus bill were not exactly a major issue. (I believe the phrase was roughly, “could drive a broken Mexican truck through the holes, even if dead drunk.”) Many economists (hi, Barkley) disagreed, even while some acknowledged that the income effect from “buying American” would be […]