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

Dean Baker on Social Security and Obama

Via Truthout Dean Baker points to continuing insistent of President Obama to keep Social Security ‘on the table’. Dean Baker has a take on some numbers surrounding the politics and stories politicans offer: While most of the DC insiders probably don’t understand the chained CPI, everyone else should recognize that this technical fix amounts to […]

Private equity and real estate managers get a "costly and unjust [tax] perk"

by Linda Beale Private equity and real estate managers get a “costly and unjust [tax] perk” Through a process of Wall Street interpretation of the law and the “Wall Street Rule” (that says that the government tax administration will have great difficulty gainsaying an interpretation of the tax laws that lots of high-powered–read “wealthy”–Wall Street […]

More on the adaptive inflation expectations hypothesis

This post will be long, fairly wonky, and confused.  I am typing, because I just have  to stop playing with FRED and write something.   My claim is that expected inflation over the next 5 (and 10 and 20) years is very similar to actual inflation over the past year.  I think the data generally […]

Offer Woodward a Buyout, Mr. Graham. And This Time Force Him to Take It. [UPDATED]

In followup to this post of mine from earlier today, I want to point out Ezra Klein’s post from last night titled “On the sequester, the American people ‘moved the goalposts’.” It begins: I don’t agree with my colleague Bob Woodward, who says the Obama administration is “moving the goalposts” when they insist on a […]

Bob Woodward’s Seriously Stupid Conflation of “The Sequester” and “A Deal to REPLACE the Sequester”

Good lord.  So much ado about one high-profile journalist’s (deliberate or inadvertent; I can’t tell which) semantics ploy.   Stellar New York Times White House correspondent Jackie Calmes, in a lengthy article on the provenance of the sequester, explains the controversy: As this weekend arrived, Republicans were circulating a column by [Bob] Woodward published online […]

One ring to rule them all…

http://www.angrybearblog.com/2008/01/some-legislators-saw-dilemma.html http://www.angrybearblog.com/2008/04/one-ring-to-rule-them-all.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/major-banks-aid-in-payday-loans-banned-by-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130224&adxnnlx=1361718393-6egGqNlj8mdptNYglLFLXQ

Why You Don’t Want Ron Fournier to Be a Journalist – (Mainstream-journalism gimmickry) [Post republished after editing]

I was wrong.  It turns out that National Journal editorial director Ron Fournier wasn’t out sick the day his eighth-grade civics class learned about the separation of powers between the three branches of the federal government, after all.  He was present and learned about it.  But he missed a class a few weeks later explaining […]

Minimum wage…who and how much??

Spencer England has written about minimum wages and employment, and Minimum wage and employment from 2008 and Teen unemployment and the minimum wage What the fiscal cliff means for the middle class and state and local taxes Economist Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and founding co-Director of the […]