cross posted with Howard Richman of Trade and Taxes We should be fighting a trade war with China, not Mexico Country U.S. Exports 2008 U.S. Imports 2008 Export/Import Ratio Mexico $176.2 billion $235.3 billion .75 China $87.4 billion $347.9 billion .25 In the 2009 appropriations bill, just signed by President Obama, Congress terminated the pilot […]
Robert Waldmann Tilman Tacke and I are quite cautious in this paper which does not support my pet theory described in this paper. The stylized fact (which has returned after a brief absence from the data) is that, given the income of poorer quintiles, where the rich are richer more babies die. My pet theory […]
h/t Movie Guy CBO Preliminary Analysis (PDF) For your reading and commenting pleasure. I would only note that much of the change between the CBO January baseline and today is just the result of scoring the intervening legislation and not due to any unexpected economic changes. But in any case here it is. Update: here […]
My Loyal Reader notes that the economic survival of Zimbabwe’s current government is now largely dependent on sin taxes: As he presented his revised 2009 budget to parliament, Finance Minister Tendai Biti noted that “indirect taxes made up of customs and excise duty have contributed 88 percent of government revenue, which means that the government […]
By Spencer, Did you know that over the last six months the compound growth of the total CPI was -5.0%. Of course that is up from January when it was – 5.8%. You have to go back to 1948 to find actual deflation like this, when it bottomed at -4.2%.. Of course much of the […]
by Bruce Webb Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. The otherwise estimable Ezra falls into the trap.Bipartisan Policy Making Hertzberg is wrong at so many levels and so many points that you hardly know where to start. I have bolded some of the really wrong-headed claims. Rick Hertzberg notices some Republicans calling […]
Cross and guest post by Raymond L. Richman ofTrade and Taxes Greenspan Protesteth Too Much Raymond L. Richman Alan Greenspan in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal 3-11-09 entitled “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble” denies that the “easy money” policies of the Federal Reserve produced the U.S. housing bubble “that is at […]
by cactus Wasting the Plenty Via Atrios, this piece of bad news from Michael Kranish at the Boston Globe: The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no […]
Robert Waldmann The bill passed by the House of Representatives which imposes a 90% tax on bonuses paid to people who earn over 250,000/year by firms which received TARP funds makes the hair on Noam Scheibers neck stand up.He writes As for the consequences we can’t foresee, most of them relate to the precedent of […]