Trans Pacific Partnership is Not Especially Important Paul Krugman argues that the Trans Pacific Partnership is no big deal: I’ve been getting a fair bit of correspondence wondering why I haven’t written about the negotiations for a Trans Pacific Partnership… The answer is that I’ve been having a hard time figuring out why this deal […]
Brendan Nyhan at Columbia Journalism Review reminds us to be careful about debating budget priorities: How should the United States choose among the difficult tradeoffs it faces in setting the federal budget? There’s no one correct answer, but you wouldn’t know it from coverage of the budget deal between Senator Patty Murray and Rep. Paul […]
Robert Solow wrote an article about Greenspan, his successes and his mistakes, Alan Greenspan Is Still Trying to Justify His Bad Decisions; What the maestro doesn’t understand. Even though I agree with what Solow said about Greenspan’s early years, I want to defend Greenspan during the years after the 2001 recession. There was something not […]
Via Alternet comes this reminder: News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark. The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO […]
Lifted from an e-mail from reader Jack (http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2013/12/20391.html#comments): (attribution corrected…irony comes to mind) Compare Fujita’s conclusion from the Fed paper, here http://philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/research-rap/2013/on-the-causes-of-declines-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate.pdf#page=7, with da Costa’s description in the WSJ. da Costa, “Philly Fed economist Shigeru Fujita argues that the shrinking of the U.S. workforce over the past year and half was “entirely due to retirement” […]
By Dale Coberly HOW MUCH INTEREST DOES SOCIAL SECURITY PAY? A reader asked what interest does Social Security pay on your “investment”? I think it is important to realize that this is not the important question about Social Security. Social Security is an insurance program and it doesn’t make any more sense to talk about […]
Lifted from comments by Fred C. Dobbs at Economist View: Supersize My Wage http://nyti.ms/1cOvtvS NYT Magazine – December 17, 2013 – ANNIE LOWREY About 20 years ago, in the midst of a recession, New Jersey decided to boost its minimum wage to $5.05 an hour from $4.25. Its neighbor to the west, Pennsylvania, chose not […]
Via Economist View comes Mark Thoma’s statement My latest column: Of Course the Safety Net Redistributes Income…That’s Why It Works: Many conservatives have attacked social insurance programs such as Social Security and Obamacare because they redistribute income from the rich to the poor, the young to the old, or from makers to takers. But there […]
I have been waiting for the Fed to reverse its loose monetary policy. I am in total favor of it. A move to $75 billion per month is a well balanced decision. They waited too long and they are way behind the curve but tapering has finally started. Good to see it.