I have been trying to write a post on what could be achieved by Fed purchases of agency issued MBS. My only new point is that the MBS price that matters is the price paid to Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie not the price on the secondary market. That is, the price that matters is the price of new […]
In August I discussed the possibility that people were trying to use a bit of money to fiddle with the poll of polls. My hypothesis was that now that averages of polls are getting more attention than the well known polls taken alone (a reasonable change in emphasis) it is possible to make the average […]
A post like this really shouldn’t be necessary, but part of the right wing canard that Obama has been a profligate spender is based on spending as a percentage of GDP. It looks like this – Graph 1. Graph 1. Fed Expenditures/GDP Sure enough, by the end of Clinton’s term the ratio had fallen from […]
The August employment report shows the economy continuing with its very sluggish pace. Although the unemployment rate fell it was due more to a contracting labor force rather than expanding employment. The household survey showed a drop of some 119,000 while the payroll or headline data increased only 96,000 — private rose 103,000 while government […]
Over at Plain Blog, an anonymous wing nut made this off-topic comment. Now, yes, Bill Clinton and his 2000 federal spending level of 18% of GDP doesn’t put him on the fringe, which makes it surprising that you lefties are celebrating him, even as you hysterically condemn anybody who resists the Left’s current massive spending […]
Joe Gagnon has a nice blog which allows comments only by e-mail. He has a proposal in two parts Next week the Fed should promise to hold the prime mortgage rate below 3 percent for at least 12 months. It can do this by unlimited purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities. By giving people a fixed […]
(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s thoughts) Robert writes: Omigod Sept 4 2012 really is opposites day. Ezra Klein made an incorrect claim of fact about health care financing. He wrote: But I’m not going to make that argument. I’m on-record saying that trust-fund accounting is by and large a ridiculous way to look at the federal […]
From Tax Prof blog: Tax Court Rejects Geithner/Turbo Tax Defense Bartlett v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2012-254 (Sept. 4, 2012): Petitioner admits that her income was misreported and that her taxable income was underreported. She maintains that she reported all of her income and that the mistakes made were “honest mistakes” resulting from her lack of […]
by Dale Coberly (Dan here…Dale Coberly replies to this article (Is it Becoming Too Late to Fix Social Security’s Finances?) by Charles Blahous). Blahous, You do not seem to grasp how small “4% of the tax base” is, or how very reasonable it would be to pay that 4% for a longer, richer retirement, out […]