Robert Waldmann via Atrios How The Gamblers See Things George Stephanopoulos from twitter: Early read on Geithner plan from plugged in investment source asset managers he knows just won’t play until sure WH can control Congress See that’s the cost of acting from anger. The Obama administration is offering asset managers a chance to play […]

rdan Reuters carries a story on the continued use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency: A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on […]

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 […]