Robert Waldmann Paul Krugman thinks that a US politician is excessively opposed to tariffs. End of days near. I think the president has this wrong: President Obama on Sunday praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as an “extraordinary first step,” but he spoke out against a provision that would impose […]

Being a seven-hour drive away, I don’t have as much direct knowledge of the NYC economy as I did a year or so ago. So I have to rely on Different Metrics. Here is one DrektheUninteresting (see #6) (of Scatterplot and Total Drek fame) will love, when he resurfaces. For those who want a contemporary […]

by Bruce Webb In comments on the last post MG was challenging 2Slugs contention that the real issue was Medicare, while BuffPilot was accusing me of ignoring Obama spending. Well I am on my way out the door and will let the CBO do the talking for me:That near term temporary light blue peak? Obama […]

CATO was making much hay a few days ago about budget problems in California, New York, and New Jersey, which can be explained, respectively, by the Governor’s veto of an Assembly-passed budget a few months ago, the decline in tax revenues from financial services firms and continuing loss of upstate industry, and underfunded pension obligations […]

by cactus Unsolicited Advice to Makers of Computers – From a Heavy User I have three Windows based PCs, and the ex-GF has a Mac. One of the Windows based PCs is a desktop, all the rest of our machines are laptops. One is a mini purchased three months ago, and the oldest machine (the […]

Robert Waldmann Suggests that serious readers go read Brad Delong’s comment on Greg Mankiw’s comment on Paul Krugman’s assertion that George Will and Gred Mankiw are “either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous.” Totally asking for it, Mankiw also commented on Krugman’s post referring to DeLong and Krugman as a tag team. I just want to […]

I subscribe to too many RSS blog feeds. So everyone once in a while one pops up and I think, “Should I drop this”? And so it is with Evolutionary Economics, which occasionally seems like a self-parody of what would happen if you recited Economics 101 cant with an added, even-less-scientific, “evolutionary psychology” glean to […]

by Bruce Webb In a previous post I highlighted the chapter of CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook that pertained to Social Security. But the Report goes beyond that and in fact focuses on two different possible scenarios outlined in the following Table:The shorthand way of defining ‘extended baseline’ is ‘Bush tax cuts expire on schedule’ while […]

rdan Finacial Times points us to WTO thinking on trade issues and cap and trade agreements. (log in required) Countries implementing cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gases may be able to use border taxes to protect domestic industries, after the World Trade Organisation gave a cautious nod to such measures. In a report to be published […]

by: Divorced one like Bush Ok folks. It’s real, this familiarity with the health care reform debate. It is a real memory you are experiencing, that deja vu feeling. Only, the reason it seems so much as deja vu is because what your being told is the trigger of the deja vu is not the […]