by Rebecca Wilder Japan to increase holding of US assets Here’s one that was tucked away in the Financial Times, Japan Post Bank urged to diversify holdings. With all of the talk about China, its currency, and the question of the Chinese “financing the U.S. deficit”, the media always forgets about Japan! From the FT: […]
Was 2009 a great year to be a bank? The headlines all say so. (The 140 U.S. banks that were closed by the FDIC last year may disagree some.) But, as Isabelle Kaminska of Alphaville notes, very little of the gains posted for last year came from anything related to talent: Deutsche Bank reported net […]
by cactus Real GDP per Capita and Tax Cuts, Top Marginal Income Tax Rate Edition One often hears that cutting marginal income tax rates, particularly on high individuals, leads to faster economic growth. Let’s dispense with argumentification, opinionizing and pontificatulationizing and graph us some data. Data for this post – top marginal rates from the […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt While Rome Burns, Nero Fiddles – Health Care Edition While the House and Senate were trying to overhaul the entire health care system, key Medicare regulations were left in limbo. Those provisions are still in limbo. Medicare physician reimbursement based on Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) have been controversial and generally […]
For those who missed it yesterday, Palace defeated the Wolves at Selhurst Park last night, 3-1 (only a goal in the 90th minute breaking the shutout) behind a hat trick from defenseman-moved-forward Danny Butterfield, who played a similar role in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Peterborough. Most interesting is this observation from Palace manager Neil Warnock: […]
Via my usual source, Citi has launched a blog. Kids, don’t try this at home. The highlight is “Help Us Build a New Citi”: Join the conversation about reform, recovery and responsible finance.Tell us what’s on your mind. Comments may be as many as 200 characters. Suggestions for comments welcome in comments here.
by Bruce Webb Well it looks like we are going to get a Deficit Commission and one way or another Social Security will be on the table. But what exactly does that mean for either Social Security or the total deficit picture? Before answering that lets review a couple of basics. In talking deficit reduction […]
by Dale Coberlyan Op-Ed BRUCE KRASTING ASKS FOR MORE A few weeks ago Bruce Krasting published on his own blog an essay claiming that Social Security was going broke and that it would cause the economy to collapse, and the only possible remedy was to means test Social Security. I replied on Angry Bear that […]
by Linda Beale Obama’s FY 2011 Budget The Obama Administration released its FY2011 Budget proposals today which assumes a substantial amount of tax cuts (making the 2001-2003 Bush cuts permanent for most Americans costs about $3.75 trillion over ten years) and some tax increases to cover important programs (about $1.9 trillion), resulting in a substantial […]
Robert Waldmann This is a brief follow up on my post on measuring bubbles. The amount lost due to sub-prime mortgages in default is tiny compared to the damage done. How large can the ratio of damage to losses be ? My answer is it can be infinite — that it is possible for irrational […]