As I’m sure all Angry Bear readers know, there is a debate within the Obama administration on whether to try to maybe do something about unemployment. To recap Obama has been talking about reducing the deficit which might ideally have no effect (if the reductions were far enough in the future) or which would make […]

by Mike Kimel The Effect of Individual Income Tax Rates on the Economy, Part 1: 1901 – 1928 In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution led to the income tax system we know and don’t love today. Since that time, in fact, since way before that time, people have been arguing about the effect […]

Try to think of times when someone has convinced you of something. It is oddly hard. I think a key reason is that we change our minds when we are not thinking about an issue. I read decades ago the report by I don’t know who that he regularly noticed that his opinions on eg […]

With a hat tip to Tim Harford, The General Manchester Police are reporting their already-public-record convictions via Twitter (@gmpolice). On a quick check, four of the eleven so far convicted (including the one woman), are over 35. So far: It appears that legendary “moral decay” began under Margaret Thatcher. Whodathunkit? Well, maybe David Cameron in […]

The bad news of the day is that about $5B ($5,000,000,000) more than previously believed went to buy goods made in China, Japan, non-major South and Central American countries, and other places outside the U.S. Per the Vampire Squid (tm Matt Taibbi), this should cause a revision to Q2 US GDP from 1.3% to 0.9%. […]

For years I’ve made it no secret that I thought the US was going to follow Japan into a so called lost decade — of course it’s now more than a decade. With the US stock market now apparently in a free fall I though this chart I’ve been keeping for years would prove of […]

Or, Barack Obama sucks at 11-dimensional chess. On July 14, 2011, S&P was assuming that 2001 and 2003 tax fraud deferrals would expire at the end of 2012 [Update: link updated, via MG; PDF–see page 4]. It is no longer making that assumption, which is worth another $4T. Brad DeLong annotates/redlines the press release without […]

From Crash of the Titans, pp. 33-34: The largest chunks of these [created by Merrill in the winter of 2006-2007] CDOs still carried triple-A ratings, at least in name, because the credit rating agencies hadn’t bothered to recalibrate their antiquated ratings models. But almost no one was willing to buy the triple-A portion of these […]