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

What Bernie Sanders is doing to help Hillary Clinton [UPDATED]

One charge against Sanders by the likes of Paul Krugman that I just could not abide—there were others, but this post is about this one—was that while Clinton was actively soliciting campaign funds for the Democratic Party to use for down-ballot candidates, Sanders was not.  In a post here about that a couple of weeks […]

Leave your Economic Modeling at Home when flying the “Doing What We Do Best” Airlines

Which appears to be taking ethnic looking civilians off their flights. Perhaps economists should not do their modeling on American Airline flights or for that matter other airlines. It seems one 40-year-old man with curly dark hair and olive skin coloring was quietly sitting in his seat scribbling calculations on a notepad. His seatmate on […]

Trump’s Solution to the Treasury Debt: Selling Mortgage-Backed Securities! (For federal lands.)

I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal. — Donald Trump, during CNBC interview, yesterday   BRET BAIER: You’ve been very clear on the stump that you oppose any reform of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Yet you told the Washington Post you would eliminate $20 trillion in U.S. national debt […]

Trump the Debt

Needless to say, Donald Trump has expressed some odd ideas on the US national debt. He has argued that we can’t afford this or that because we are 19 trillion in debt, promised to pay back the debt in 8 years, & asserted that the debt is no big problem (one out of three right […]

How Trump Can Drive the Republican Establishment/1%ers to the Libertarian Party

Lot of angst out there among the Republican Establishment facing the Era of Trump. They are facing a candidate who combines a fatal toxic brew of nativism/racism with economic and foreign policy stances that (to the extent they are even coherent) go against every tenet of Conservative orthodoxy on both sides of the Reagan/Elder Bush […]

Oh FSM! Let your Noodly Appendages Bless Trump-Ernst 2016

Raw Story: Who will be Donald Trump’s running mate? Here are five options Joni Ernst The gun-totin’, Harley-ridin’, pig castratin’ Iowa farm girl burst onto the scene when she won the Iowa senate race in 2014. Ernst has shown no willingness to embrace Trump, but the 45-year-old first-term female senator would be an ideal running […]

Prayer – Science = 0

Yes, it’s okay to talk about climate change right now. The devastating natural disaster in Fort McMurray is “consistent” with climate change. The Fort McMurray wildfire is horrific. Miraculously, no people have been killed, so far. Saying that the unseasonably hot conditions in Alberta are “consistent with” climate change is not to say that they […]