Duff and Phelps, which tends to be the rating agency you go to if S&P or Moody’s won’t rate you highly enough, provides a convenient evaluation table (p. 22 of this report) for the marvelous negotiating techniques and acquisition skills of the previous Administration. Since the current Administration is now threatening to continue with the […]

By Spencer The employment report shows the economy accelerating to the downside. This is now the worse employment drop in the post WW II era. The index is now at 97.1(100= peak) as compared to 99.0 at this point in both the 1974 and 1981 cycles. Hours worked continue to accelerate downward Although wages are […]

rdan The Guardian discusses fungibles. Americans are not used to this directness of private company foreign exchanges of workers. We have relied on visas and encouraging low wage illegal immigration to accomplish this task. It seems to me we will have to get used to a greater variety of hiring practices from private, ‘American’ multi-national […]

I am flattered that the economic of contempt guy* wrote me a long e-mail about my last CDS post. The e-mail is after the jump. my comments on his comments in [brackets] I am flattered by the attention. Really, I stress, I only recently learned what a CDS is. I wanted to respond to your […]

I was pontificating earlier today about how many of the now-unemployed Financial Services workers were, in a previous life, engineers of one stripe or another, and if we’re going to be doing things with the stimulus bill such as re-engineer the power grid, some of them may well decide to return to their previous life. […]

DeLong body-slams Mankiw. Especially like this: Mankiw: The CEA website should also post a notice about CEA internships, as we had during my tenure as CEA chair, so students can find out how to apply. DeLong: “Let me, for one, state that I am very glad that Christie Romer has been too busy since her […]

By Spencer Just to put things in perspective. Note, that January auto sales and retailers reports imply another down month.

Up to now most of the numbers used in the Pick your Pork series have been drawn from the initial House version of the bill. But now the action has moved to the Senate and it is time to shift our ground in response. So lets develop some links. CBO Director’s Blog: Macroeconomic Effects of […]

by Divorced one like Bush I think it’s time to reread the World Bank report on what creates wealth because it seems that the arguments against the stimulus are from a mind-set of very narrow thinking about what creates wealth. They all seem focused on what the World Bank report calls “Produced Capital”. Unfortunately, focusing […]

Robert Waldmann Thinks that this post by Mark Thoma discussing this Post by Menzie Chinn is unusually excellent. I suggest you go read it. If interested my thoughts on it after the jump. ideology. Its just not done to write that the debate is ideologues on one side non-ideologues on the other. In fact, he […]