Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Scariest Graphic I Made All Week, or, Still More on Excess Reserves and "Money"

One of the nice things about the Kauffman Foundation’s Blogger Conference is the time to let the mind wander and look at data after having your brain scoured. One of the worst things is realizing too late that you’ve got a Really Ugly Graphic, and most of the people who could help with it are […]

Can Your State Mandate That You Buy Broccoli or Join a Gym? (And why the excoriation of Donald Verrilli is misplaced)

The answer to the title’s question—Can your state mandate that you buy broccoli or join a gym?—depends upon which of the two possible grounds the 5-4 Supreme Court majority overturns the ACA’s individual-mandate provision.  And which grounds the majority selects also will determine whether under the Court’s new “liberty” jurisprudence, Social Security and Medicare also […]

Lending, Velocity, and Aggregate Demand

JKH likes this line in Keen’s response to Krugman: The endogenous increase in the stock of money caused by the banking sector creating new money is a far larger determinant of changes in aggregate demand than changes in the velocity of an unchanging stock of money. It struck me as an empirical question: how do […]

Consumer Spending on Energy

Today’s release of personal income and expenditure data was about as expected and the January-February data suggest that first quarter real personal expenditures component of the real GDP account will show about 2% real growth. But the energy expenditures within the data has been little noticed. Normally rising energy prices dampen the economy. But this […]

If there was a Public Option in PPACA, what grounds would the Supreme Court use to overturn it?

The above is a more-than-semi-serious question. I’ll be blogging/tweeting the Kauffman Foundation’s Bloggers’s Forum tomorrow from 9:30-3:30 EDT (8:30-2:30 here in Kansas City; 6:30-12:30 in DeLong/Thomaville; in Hawaii, they’re still watching Dave Garroway). You can tell it has reached maturity because tomorrow’s presenters include J. Bradford DeLong, Scott Sumner, Tyler Cowen, and Karl Smith—and that’s […]

Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Budget for All Deserves as Much Scrutiny as Paul Ryan’s Budget

Firedoglake author David Dayen notes that Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Budget for All Deserves as Much Scrutiny as Paul Ryan’s Budget – As long as the news media devotes massive amounts of space to a fantasy budget, why can’t they turn their attention for just a minute to a more legitimate one? Sure, the Congressional Progressive […]

Keen Answers Krugman

I think Steve handles it admirably, and admirably briefly, so in this case I’ll simply point you over there. On bank lending’s creating deposits and Paul Krugman’s response | Credit Writedowns. Cross-posted at Asymptosis.