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

Employment Report

By Spencer The BLS just wished the Obama administration a very merry Christmas with a very encouraging employment report. It was still a report that things are worsening at a lesser rate as far as employment was concerned, but other employment reports were positive. The unemployment rate fell to 10.0% as payroll employment was essentially […]

I Tend to Describe this as "Unwarranted Optimism"

The Shrill One (tm – Brad DeLong) as Optimist: The result, then, will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right […]

Simple Answers to Simple Questions, Floyd Norris/GS Edition

Floyd Norris is Shocked! Shocked! to Find Goldman Sachs controls Congress as well as the Treasury. Where has he been for the past three years? Imagine the reaction if, perhaps during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, a group of Republican legislators had threatened to block legislation unless a contributor to their campaigns received special treatment. […]

Same Store Sales

By Spencer With Christmas season upon us and a great deal of attention being focused on the retailers reports of same store sales I thought it would be a good time to report on one of my pet peeves. I see people time and time again taking the retailers same store sales data and deflating […]

Cross-post: A human economy for the twenty-first century

Professor Keith Hart, author of the book The Memory Bank and proprietor of the blog of the same name, has graciously allowed AB to cross-post his 6,000+ word essay, A Human Economy for the Twenty-First Century. Enjoy. Our moment in history Magellan’s crew completed the first circumnavigation of the planet some thirty years after Columbus […]

France? Ireland? Begium? Mauritania? And now Italy

No, not the 2010 World Cup draw. Countries that have more faith in the ability of people paid to protect them than the United States: Since 2002, more than 550 detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay for other destinations, including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, France, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Jordan, […]