by Linda Beale NY AG defends tax-exempt organization probe After complaints from some academics about the rationale for a New York investigation of tax exempt organizations and a letter from Congressional Republicans Dave Camp (MI) and Orrin Hatch (Utah)suggesting that the New York Attorney General should not be seeking copies of federal returns from taxpayers […]

In comments to my previous post, Robert requested the unsmoothed data from Graph 3.  Here it is.   GPDI is plotted against the Capital Gains Tax Rate. Since the Capital Gains Tax Rate (X-axis) is quantized, the result is columns of data.  Compared to the smoothed version, there is little change in either the slope or […]

I have an embarrassing confession to make.  I forgot the date QE III was announced. I decided to graph the 3 year Tresury constant maturity interest rate.  The logic is that I don’t believe the current FOMC can plausibly precommit to policy more than around three years from now.  Most members’ terms end in January […]

It appears that in the conservasphere Rasmussen polling is called “Rasmussen the most accurate pollster.”  In fact Rasmussen had the best performance in 2008.  This was widely noted. However Rasmussen performed terribly in 2010.  If one focused solely on the final poll issued by Rasmussen Reports or Pulse Opinion Research in each state — rather […]

I am aware of the internet tradition called the 27% Crazification Factor which is undead and well But can we get a solid lower bound on the sane (OK really well informed) factor ?  For example, there was the February 2010  New York Times CBS News poll in which 12% of respondents correctly noted that Obama […]

Matt Yglesias, servitor to our corporate overlords, suggests that the reduced capital gains tax rate paid by rentiers like Willard Romney is really a very, very good thing.  To wit: The main reason Romney’s effective rate is so low is that the American tax code contains a lot of preferences for investment income over labor […]

What kind of econotroll are you ? This is a must read.  I honestly did laugh out loud.

Romney’s plan to find a cure for cancer: A bullet point saying “I’ll find a cure for cancer.” Voila!  Elect Romney. 

The always-brilliant J. W. Mason’s response to what in my opinion is a quite befuddled Mike Beggs review in Jacobin of David Graeber’s Debt: The First Five Thousand Years prompts me to tackle a subject that I’ve been worrying at for a long time: Money. I’ve been worrying at it despite (or because of) endless […]