Did others notice that year-to-date inflation, as measured by the CPI, is zero?

“Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan.” Unless you’re a chubby chaser, it’s not an image that one immediately thinks of as licentious. After a few days, Apple is at least considering this. (The headline appears to jump the gun.) Yes, it’s that time of the year again.

There was an interesting blog post over at the Macroblog (Atlanta Fed) regarding productivity. John Robertson and Pedro Silos highlight the contributions to GDP growth from various factors, including productivity and employment. One of their findings: As this chart shows, relatively high labor productivity growth during a recession is not a phenomenon isolated to the […]

Industrial production and housing starts were reported today. It has been well covered elsewhere, but I though I would make a couple of comments. Compared to other cycles this recovery in industrial production continues to be moderate. It is stronger than in the weak recoveries, but compared to the depth of the downturns the rebound […]

Debt, Deficits, and Defense…The Sustainable Defense Task Force set in motion by Rep. Barney Frank has comprehensive suggestions. It is more specific than other suggestions I have read. David Ignatius of the Washington Post sees deficits concern as a possible unifying process among right/left thinking. I don’t see it. Bruce Bartlett comments on deficits and […]

Health care reform blog reminds us both complexity of costs: Thus, areas with high medical spending do not have offsetting lower pharmaceutical spending; in fact, if the coding practices in different regions are not too dissimilar, the substantial variation in pharmaceutical spending does not seem to be strongly associated with variations in medical spending at […]

By Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter FATCA (foreign account tax compliance act FATCA (foreign account tax compliance act–or is it the anti-fatcat act?)The attention of US tax enforcement has been focused on offshore issues for some time. Of course, the most conspicuous part of that has been the ongoing dispute with UBS, a Swiss bank that […]

by Mike Kimel Presidents, the Tax Burden, and Economic Growth This post also appears at the Presimetrics Blog. It contains some information that has appeared in a few different Angry Bear posts, but I think I’m starting to manage to put it into a more coherent narrative. And as I’m able to do that, I’m […]

by Linda Bealefor the complete post go to Ataxingmatter Estate Tax–Kyl continues working for the ultra wealthy Jon Kyl doesn’t think much about the government helping the unemployed who have been laid off because of the financial crisis, triggered by greedy excesses at the nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders. He’s afraid that providing additional […]