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

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Cap-and-Trade Proposals…and truth in spending

rdan Lots has been said about costs and this study. Please notice the cost includes insulating the house as well. Here is a Letter to Nation Republican Congressional Committee regarding cap and trade costs to households. About $340 per household in the MIT study versus about $3000 claimed by the Republicans? And so easily checked…yet […]

SIGTARP Quarterly Report to Congress

rdan Special Inspector General Barofsky and his team make particular note of the lack of oversight in TARP, and also worry that hedge funds are even more opaque in other trillion dollar programs. The SIGTARP team did its own survey and received reasonable, but uneven, reporting by banks eventhough Treasury said it would be too […]

A brand name that pays back…?

rdan 24/7 Wallstreet suggests AIG might pay back much of the money lent to it by Uncle Sam (#11). Is this notion really in the cards for the taxpayer?? AIG (AIG) may be the only large company in America that both the management and federal government want torn apart. If AIG succeeds in selling most […]

More than favoritism?

rdan(response to cactus, lifted from comments, by juan. Slightly edited for readability)) ‘Favoritism’ seems too kind while also continuing to assume legal-political institutions [‘the state’] to be dominant rather than dominated, which is then to avoid the question of which class or class segment dominates through the mediation of ‘the state’. Willem Buiter put it […]

Lane Kenworthy series

rdan Consider the Evidence and Crooked Timber April 16-18, 2009 post a series by Lane Kenworthy on income inequality. Our own Robert Waldmann has thoughts of his own as well. How to pay for inequality reduction: follow-upApril 20, 2009 One way to make some progress in reducing income inequality is to significantly increase redistributive transfers […]

Interest rates versus leverage

rdan(hat tip ronin 8317…A very good paper by John Geanakoplos on the leverage cycle..) John Geanakoplos on the leverage cycle At least since the time of Irving Fisher, economists, as well as the general public, have regarded the interest rate as themost important variable in the economy. But in times of crisis, collateral rates (equivalently […]

Forbes and the "Self-Made" Label

by cactus Forbes and the “Self-Made” Label I’m kinda busy these days, but this topic is small pet peeve of mine: what the heck is up with Forbes and the “self-made” label? On occasion, I’ve gone through the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans and marveled at who Forbes manages to decide qualifies as self-made. […]