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

Sit back and relax: the US and China, this is gonna take awhile

China exported its way to a $2 trillion dollar fortress of F/X reserves ($USD mostly), while the US borrowed its way into a hole deep enough to spark a vast global recession. Who’s to blame? Given the symbiotic relationship in the chart above, it’s hard to blame any one individual, group, or even country. But […]

Job Automation, Purchasing Power and Consumer Spending

by Martin Ford Job Automation, Purchasing Power and Consumer Spending I’ve had several recent posts here arguing that automation technology is likely to depress wages and lead to significant structural unemployment in the coming years. One of the most common criticisms of my argument is that I am “not thinking like an economist” and that […]

In Good News, the Race to the Bottom Got Harder

Remember the argument that we shouldn’t tax people because they’ll just move elsewhere? The British government appears not to believe it. Will the Geithner/Summers axis continue lying that “we can’t do that”? Since it really is a Windfall Profit, taxing it seems a reasonable idea. And now we won’t even be able to pretend that […]

We Report, You Lie

NYT headline: Audit Finds TARP Program Effective. Paragraph six of the same article: The Treasury’s lack of clarity about the program’s goals, the oversight panel said, made it hard to assess its overall effectiveness. Mr. Geithner is scheduled to testify on Thursday in his quarterly appearance before the five-member panel. [emphasis mine] Clearly. one of […]

War taxes?

by Linda Beale(cross posted at ataxingmatter) One can question the timing of implementation, but can one argue against the financing? …Rdan War taxes? Since Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001 (and then, Iraq), we have been paying for war as an afterthought. In the Bush era attempt to treat war as something that happened “over there” […]

The Current Health Care Reform Compromise

So the Sen Ten have reached a secret deal. The main points seem to be that the public option is replaced by an sub – exchange of private non profit insurers (which is very close to nothing at all) and people from 55 to 65 can buy into Medicare. I was going to give a […]

Cap and Trade and Horse Trading

Robert Waldmann Has a thought about how to get votes for a cap and trade bill in the Senate without giving a windfall to incumbent polluters. The problem is that it seems to be necessary to buy the votes of coal state legislators. The House’s solution is to give C02 permits to current polluters. This […]