Paul Krugman is direct and to the point this morning: Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of […]

Hat tip Rebecca for this link to the Curious Capitalist Invariably, when we start debating jobs programs and stimulus spending, people start talking about the long-term problem of government spending. It raises our national debt, and could cause inflation down the road. But what is often overlooked when inflation is brought up, is that not […]

Michael Hudson at New Economic Perspectives points us to the difference between the overall economy and the financial sector: When politicians let the financial sector run the show, their natural preference is to turn the economy into a grab bag. And they usually come out ahead. That’s what the words “foreclosure,” “forfeiture” and “liquidate” mean […]

In Linda’s post on the budget deficit in the comments it was claimed that the budget deficit was Obama’s fault and a chart was cited that showed the deficit in someone’s estimate of real dollars. The standard way of comparing deficits across time and across different countries is to show the deficit — past and […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter What caused the Budget Deficit (Before the Financial Crisis)? Kash on Angry Bear put together a really good graph in 2006 comparing where we might have been if Clinton policies (bad as they were in many cases) had stayed in place compared to where we were and expected to be […]

The Senate voted down the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010, 57 to 41 (see an earlier version of the CBO’s estimate here for a breakdown of the Bill). The emergency extensions to weekly unemployment benefits will now expire, leaving many without government support as the labor market improves at snail speed. […]

by Linda Bealecross posted with Ataxingmatter Bank Tax: France, Germany and UK, but where’s the USA? On June 23, the big three Euro countries–France, Germany, and Britain–agreed to tax banks directly, “to ensure that banks make a fair contribution to reflect the risks they pose to the financial system and wider economy, and to encourage […]

by Bruce Webb Mostly lost in the furor over whether BP Apologist Joe Barton should remain as Ranking Member of the House Energy Committee and so potentially the Chairman should the Republicans take over the House is the fact that under Republican caucus rules he is term-limited out. Something high-lighted in this Feb article focused […]

… While it will be many years yet before we can put a hard number on the amount of taxpayer dollars actually lost in the bailout, the Center for Media and Democracy’s latest assessment of dollars disbursed in the bailout graphically illustrates the extraordinary lengths to which the federal government went to bailout the financial […]