By Spencer With the unemployment rate jumping to 8.1% and downward revisions of the previous monthsemployment numbers it is hard to find anything encouraging in the February employment report. But there is one tentative good sign. I watch both the payroll and households surveys because the household survey tends to lead the payroll report at […]

by cactus Going Galt – Present and Past There seems to be some chatter among right wing blogs about “going Galt” – i.e., ceasing to do paying work, shuttering one’s business, etc. – given Obama’s plan to let Bush tax cuts on those with the highest levels of income expire. (This new movement is covered […]

Robert Waldmann I don’t have a very positive view of innovative financial products, or rather, of financial products invented in the past 20 years or so. However, I love mortgage bonds (MBSs). I think they are an excellent way of diversifying and eliminating risk. However, I have to admit that they create a problem. Since […]

Robert Waldmann Below I ask why the argument that the stimulus must crowd out private spending because output can’t be higher than aggregate supply hasn’t been made (or made more often if I missed it). So now I will try to make that argument. One rule is that I must concede that there are unemployed […]

Robert Waldmann is still wondering why eminent economists have been making such implausible arguments. Eugene Fama’s mad predictions based on an accounting identity (and forgetting that the value of goods which firms produce but can’t sell is counted as inventory investment). Then Eugene Fama asserted that the velocity of available funds or something is constant. […]

Robert Waldmann Some people around the web are suggesting that the desperate times call for desperate measures and say that US should just print money to save the banks — risk of hyperinflation be damned. What exactly do they think we have been doing ? For example Reader .A.M writes to the incredibly smart Matthew […]

by Bruce Webb In a world where we actually had our priorities straight we wouldn’t even be talking about Social Security. The country, the world is sick with fear about our jobs, about keeping our houses, about the plunging values in our 401ks. The LAST thing we need is the Peter G. Petersons fear-mongering Social […]

by cactus Tax cuts aren’t the only thing that work great in every situation. Hoarding gold works too: Gold is now regarded as a hedge against both inflation and deflation, says Alan Ruskin, the chief international strategist at Greenwich, Connecticut-based RBS Greenwich Capital Markets Inc. The first is reflected in the high dollar price of […]

Robert Waldmann I have long thought that the nuclear option for the Democrats to crush the Republicans was to reform the tax code so most families pay negative income tax. Now I learn that they have very nearly done that. Via Ezra Klein STEPHEN OHLEMACHER reports for AP. WASHINGTON (AP) — A typical American family […]