Robert Waldmann The Census Bureau has released estimates of poverty in 2009. Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on […]

There are a lot of interpretations about President Obama’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren as an ‘assistant to the President’ to oversee the creation and development of the Consumer Protection Agency. Yves Smith sees this as a way to neutralize her either as a head of an agency or as an outsider evaluating the work and […]

Robert Waldmann Matty Yglesias has an amazing catch. He says that competitive devaluations achieved via unsterilized interventions would be a good thing, becuase they would cause inflation. He notes that someone disagrees. The Economist’s Buttonwood “The result is like a game of deflationary pass the parcel…” Of course, Mr or Ms Buttonwood should have written […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt HEALTH CARE: Obama Administration Gets Tough With Insurers DHHS Secretary Sebelius has lambasted the private health insurance industry in a letter to the industry’s trade association (I’m not a big friend of health insurance companies, FWIW). From the letter: “There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and […]

Robert Waldmann This whole post is after the jump as my accounting is not ready for prime time. Scott Sumner thinks he is the first to note that the cost to the US government of bailing out the big banks is more likely to be a profit than a cost. Clearly he doesn’t read angry […]

From a news alert: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will hear directly this week from U.S. investors about what they want in terms of regulation of financial professionals providing investment advice and the extent to which they are confused as to who is held to a fiduciary duty. …The organizations holding the news […]

by Dale Coberly CRUSHING TAX BURDEN ™ I have been putting some information together for an article about the cost of paying the money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund, and I found a chart among my papers breaking down the effective tax rate among the different income levels. Unfortunately I don’t know where […]

by Dan Crawford Sometimes I will post an article without much of my own comment to offer points of view to readers from other sources. I have yet to find an op-ed that so clearly defines several points of view so well and clearly, so will offer it to readers and frame it my way: […]

Robert Waldmann It appears that far right candidate Christine O’Donnell just beat sure thing in the general election hopefulless Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican senatorial primary ! It is widely believed that this is worth almost a full expected seat for the Democrats. It means a possible narrative post election day might be that […]

Attention Nominal Comparisons of Obama National Debt Figures: Get Real The conservative blogosphere (with the help of Drudge) is busy citing a story put out by CNSNews’ Terence Jeffrey, whose headline reads: “Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data.” Unfortunately, this […]