Robert Waldmann The www.washington.com Headline and abstract person has outdone himself or herself writing CBO sees debt estimates soar Analysts say health law has not improved budget and Obama’s tax agenda will make things worse. Lori Montgomery As Kevin Drum says always click the link. Lori Montgomery actually wrote President Obama’s overhaul of the health-care […]

Under CBO’s ‘Extended Baseline’, i.e. roughly Current Law the 75 year actuarial gap is up to 1.6% from 1.3% and the date of Trust Fund Exhaustion moved back from 2043 to 2039. Under the ‘Alternative Fiscal Scenario’ the corresponding numbers are 2.1% and 2037 or right in line with the Social Security Trustees 2009 projections. […]

by Bruce Webb CBO Director’s Blog summary of Long Term Budget Outlook (Interesting side comment: “Later this week, CBO will release a report on a number of different policy options for changing Social Security”). Elmendorf, not surprising given his history and current job, is fully on the side of the deficit hawk/hysterics. Report text (1.2MB […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter Some Links Worth Noting at CBPP–causes of deficit, increases in income inequality Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Where Today’s Large Deficits Come From Amidst all the renewed talk about budget deficits, it’s important to remind ourselves what caused the signficiant expansion of the deficit. As I’ve noted, it can […]

Andy Harless presents the case for a double dip (second recession) – I would re-order #1 and #2 on that list – and that for a sustained recovery. #6 of Andy’s case for a sustained recovery (he calls it Case Against a Second Dip) caught my attention, pointing me to an earlier Paul Krugman article […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter The Supreme Court’s Decision in In re Bilski:: does it allow tax patents or not? The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bilski Monday, holding, as almost everyone had predicted, that the hedging process that was the subject of the Bilski claim was unpatentable. Download Bilski at SCOTUS 08-964. […]

by Mike KimelCross-posted on the Presimetrics blog. Taxes and Private Sector Investment – Evidence from the Real WorldLast week I had a post (which appeared both here and at Angry Bear). The post included the following graph: Figure 1 The graph looks at every eight year period since 1929 (the first year for which National […]

The Washington Post reports on an interesting development. If people aren’t able to “see” how they personally fit in to the ‘economy’ or ‘carbon footprint’ in a real way, they often ignore the ‘problem’ or keep it so abstract it does not touch them. Three years ago, Dan Yates and Alex Laskey, the co-founders of […]

by Bruce Webb via Brad DeLong we learn that CBO is releasing its 2010 Long Term Budget Outlook on Wednesday at 9AM. Which is also the date that the 2010 Social Security Report is (over-)due to be released. Which means some head to head, apples to apples comparisons of economic projections over the 75 year […]

by Beverly Mannoriginally posted at The Annarborist A Caveat, Walter Dellinger “In Skilling (ably explained by Paul’s posting), my law firm colleagues pressed the argument that the statutory crime of denying anyone of the “intangible right of honest services” was unconstitutionally vague unless it was sharply limited to bribery and kickbacks. Given that the honest-services […]