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

AARP vs. Social Security?

by Dale Coberly AARP vs. Social Security? Last week Huffington Post reported that AARP was embarking on a “Social Security and Medicare “listening tour” called “You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening.” Through “town halls, community conversations, bus tours and other events,” the influential organization promises to offer members a chance to speak out on […]

Panel Discussion with: Krugman, Sachs, Phelps, Soros

Just wanted to let everyone know about a presentation that aired on Cspan’s Book TV.  It is a 2 hour panel discussion titles: Global Economy: Crisis Without End.  It was held 2/17/12.   Click hereto bring up the show.   What I found most interesting was the different perspectives between Krugman and Sachs. I’m not […]

Thinking About the Fed

JKH has magisterial post up on the recent dust-up over Saving as perceived in various sectoral models — one-sector (global, for instance, or government- and trade-balanced domestic private sector); two-sector (government and private including international); the most common MMT construct, the three-sector model (government, domestic private, and international); the rather uncommon four-sector model (government, international, […]

Housing Bubbles: Less Frothy but Europe is Behind

by Rebecca Wilder Housing Bubbles: Less Frothy but Europe is Behind Wolfgang Muenchau’s article in the Financial Times, There is no Spanish siesta for the Eurozone, inspired me to update my post on housing bubbles around the world (really just Europe and the US). He argues that Spain’s bubble was much more extreme, and that […]

Still haven’t filed your FBAR? Don’t wait till you get hit with forfeiture

by Linda Beale Still haven’t filed your FBAR? Don’t wait till you get hit with forfeiture like this Alaska Plastic Surgeon It looks like the leads from the various voluntary disclosures are beginning to pay off, as the U.S. is beginning to develop high stakes cases related to Americans who have tried to maintain secret […]

More on Greg Mankiw’s weak arguments for the Bain capital gains preference

by Linda Beale More on Greg Mankiw’s weak arguments for the Bain capital gains preference A few days ago, I commented on the weak arguments Greg Mankiw had put forth in his op-ed to support the preferential treatment of compensation for private equity and real estate partnership “profits” partners. He points out the categorization problem–that […]

Learning from campaigns, writing on issues

George Lakoff offers a clear opinion on an important aspect of how people learn from election and media presentations. There are a lot of examples of reporting and the concept is clear enough.   However, it is an entirely different proposition when applied to real life in posts or comments…for instance, how posts are written, for what audience, […]

Fiduciary duty and self-interest

Lifted from comments from Linda Beale’s post Graphs Show It Clearly–the richest are much richer and most of us are poorer discussing the main points and data from David Cay Johnston’s Reuters article The richest get richer is Bruce Webb’s thinking on how the American market system was designed over time:Defenders of Goldman who base […]