The latest Bloomberg poll contains a few shocking results.  Most responses are of the form a majority (but not a huge majority) agree with Obama and disagree with the Republicans in Congress. One shocking result is that a big big 6% correctly answer that the Federal budget deficit is decreasing.  This beats the old low […]

It is naïve to think banks utilising complex trading strategies and products, across global markets, can be supervised using simple rules (even if calibrated to penal settings). Indeed, an important driver has been the necessity to address perverse incentives that are created by simple rules. – Stegan Ingves, 24 Jan 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/social-security-fact-checkers-fiscal-cliff_n_2286462.html

I’m a WWII buff, and also a journalism buff, and so this story by Paul Farhi in today’s Washington Post made my heart race a bit, especially since, well, I already knew some of it–the part about the charge that the iconic Joe Rosenthal photo of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, shot […]

It’s unconscionable to use our military men and women in uniform as a bargaining chip to raise our taxes. — Rep. Martha Roby, (R. Ala.) Our taxes, huh?  Ours!  This actually is unexpectedly good financial news for most of, um, us. Not to mention very surprising news. According to The New York Times today, Roby […]

http://www.mpettis.com/2013/02/21/a-brief-history-of-the-chinese-growth-model/

by Linda Beale Hedge Fund Tax Avoidance Schemes–using (purported) offshore reinsurers It seems that billionaires think they are entitled to it all and think they should be able to run their speculative games without paying much of anything at all in taxes to the government they depend on. And none of this is good for […]

Peter Dorman at Econospeak takes a look at economics and models. (Re-posted with authors consent) How to Think About Aggregate Labor Markets The remarkable Tyler Cowen has me scratching my head again. Here he is at the beginning of a critique of minimum wage laws and sticky-price Keynesianism. (The latter is an oxymoron, as anyone […]

My post in 2008  Draining 401k pool of money  came to mind  when I saw this Washington Post article in 2013…The trends have accelerated over the last four years, and as a general political and policy issue the lens is currently based on a pre-occupation with the federal budget deficits and austerity, the private side […]

From the NYT …the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a new campaign finance lawsuit that challenges long-established federal caps on the total amount an individual can contribute to federal campaigns in a two-year cycle. In a ruling last year, a special court in Washington correctly upheld those limits, which in some form have been […]