Preliminary election results from the Israeli elections are due in a couple of hours and no one who follows this even a little bit imagines that the path going forward is anything but fraught with uncertainty. Indeed it is not clear that given the polling that any stable government can be formed. But what is […]

Uber wonk Matt O’Brien writes about The “weird way people talk about zero interest rates” He discusses Gillian Tett discussing her conversations with those who O’Brien calls the “the masters of the universe.” They don’t like the Fed’s extremly low interest rate policy. They can’t claim that loose monetary policy has causes excessive inflation, so […]

The Tax Justice Network has just inaugurated a new blog, Fools’ Gold. It just came out with an excellent piece on taxes and Irish economic success in the “Celtic Tiger” era, written by Nick Shaxson. As I argued in 2011 and in my book Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital, Ireland had low […]

Continuing my efforts to demonstrate that a little knowledge of the law is a dangerous thing (and adding a superfluous Wald to the name of the AngryBear competent to discuss this) I wonder how and why Senators decided that the President must seek their advice and consent before performing any foreign policy (including for all […]

In many ways, [Clinton] did a good job at her press conference on Tuesday. The part of her speech talking about her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral arrangements being off limits, that certainly resonated. She absolutely was right when she said, “No one wants their personal e-mails made public.” — Hillary Clinton Is Turning […]

by New Deal democrat The Phillips curve in 3 dimensions, animated – Yesterday I wrote that the Phillips curve might best be considered as three-dimensional, where the third axis was commodity prices, and in particular Oil.  A shock to underlying commodity prices would also “shock” the unemployment vs. inflation trade-off, moving the curve along the […]

by Joseph Joyce Global Stability, National Responsibilities The global financial crisis demonstrated clearly how the flow of money across borders could deepen and widen a financial crisis. A decline in U.S. housing prices led to a re-examination of the safety of financial securities based on them and an implosion in credit markets as financial institutions […]

by New Deal democrat The Phillips curve in the 21st century (or, The Phillips curve as a 3 dimensional foil) This is my third post about the possibility of the Fed raising rates as early as June. In the first post, I pointed out that both wage growth and inflation are at historic, half-century lows. […]

The 47 senators who wrote their absurd ignorant improper and (almost) unprecedented letter in an attempt to undermine Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the (5)+1 are not traitors. The Constitution defines treason “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and […]