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

Nate Silver invades our turf

Robert Waldmann Having demonstrated an ability to find amazing patterns in numbers from baseball and polls, Nate Silver turns his attention to the stock market. He finds mean reversion in day to day prices since 2000 ! That is evidence of over-reaction and a correction. Amazing ! more after the jump. Now Silver knows he […]

How to Manage Variable Costs, Arkansas-Style

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (link may not be public): The Arkansas legislature is taking a different approach to reining in soaring tuition costs: Today it sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would cap the amount of money public colleges can spend on scholarships. Increases in scholarship aid lead to higher tuition […]

Health Care Game On

Robert Waldmann If this article by REED ABELSON in the NY Times is correct, health insurance companies are basically begging for the H Clinton health care plan. Now I’m old enough to remember that things looked good in February 1993, but it seems that Obama’s opposition to a mandate was (accidental ?) genius. The plan […]

The Two Sides of AIG

In this corner, as previously mentioned, Yves Smith goes for the slam dunk: Let’s see, the credit default swaps market, due to some netting, is now somewhere north of $30 trillion (as opposed to its earlier “north of $60 trillion” level). Investment banks were believed to have hedged most of their exposure via offsetting contracts, […]

NYT asks when will it end?

By divorced one like Bush Via C & L via CR comes the NYT asking when will the recession be over. They have 11different responses. Roubini is there suggesting we could see an L curve. We now face a 1 in 3 chance that, if appropriate policies are not put in place, this ugly U-shaped […]

More Following the Money

by Bruce Webb (h/t Susan G at dKos.) David Waldman aka KagroX has put together at Congress Matters what he calls aTreasure trove of tools we need to understand the budget process. It’s pretty impressive, if you want the full span of Congressional budget materials you have it right here. Heck even Movie Guy would […]

Follow the money

rdan Stimulus Watch is a site to review state by state appropriations for projects. (hat tip Ken) One site that provides a look at both budget and stimulus appropriations by category, and when details were included in the budget they were accounted for. I have not been thorough in my look but it looked to […]

Keeping up is hard work

rdan Does anyone have advice on how to keep up with President Obama’s full court press on a broad front of issues? I have no memory of any President getting so much dealt with in so short of time…both the economy and Iraq/Afghanistan, as well as the energy and health care dilemmas he faces.

This Makes More Sense–or Does It?

Dr. Black (you know the site) links to AIG Strike Three. And unlike the Citi debacle previously discussed (relatively) positively and rather negatively here, this one makes some form of sense. The difference comes down to the meaning of an accounting concept: ongoing concern. More below the break (yes, this might get wonkish. It’s me, […]

More on Romer and Romer 2007

Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong has a question. He is impressed by Christine Romer’s latest speech but he doesn’t believe the huge estimate (on the order of 3) of the tax cut multiplier in Romer and Romer 2007 (warning pdf). He suspects that they left something out. I agree that the evidence for large multipliers (on […]