by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter “More On UBS and Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld The Washington correspondent for Feature Story News, Daniel Ryntjes, interviewed Bradley Birkenfeld in jail recently. You can find the audio interview and other items on the UBS banking secrecy case, at this link. Birkenfeld says that most of the US clients were “sophisticated […]

Authors Mike Kimel and Michael Kanell use data to turn some commonly held assumptions on their head in interview The ‘Conservative’ Reagan and Other Political Myths Dispelled with reporter Zach Miner. In their book Presimetrics: What the Facts Tell Us About How the Presidents Measure Up on the Issues We Care About, Kimel, who has […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter Taxes, Deficits and Elections As we near the fall elections amid a “tea party” surge of anti-government (and hence anti-tax) sentiment, I cannot help but worry about my country. The tea party activists are apparently primarily decently educated, middle-class citizens. They have supported extremist candidates in a number of states, […]

by Run Whatever happened to the Guns or Butter premise? Naomi Freundlich at Maggie Mahar’s Health Beat Blog discusses the passage of the $26 billion state aid package and why it does not go far enough in securing healthcare for those who qualify for Medicaid. Passage of $26 billion State Aid Package Is Merely a […]

by reader Ilsm Approving Military Equipment Procurement The Defense Acquisition Board is there to prevent the issues identified in the annual GAO Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs, 09-326SP and 10-388SP. The Board does not insist on product knowledge about what it is committing US funds for, nor manage the approval process through which a program […]

by Dan Crawford (Rdan) Business Insider offers one sort of opinion by Mike Shedlock… what I can gather from the short article are the implications that outsourcing over the globe is a consequence of unions, that we should be more like Louisiana, and there is no economic literature on labor to offer some alternative explanations. […]

by Dan Crawford (Rdan) Voxeu carries a post on research into increasing global trade, technology, and wages patterns: The theoretical case for the potential effect of trade on the distribution of income has a long and distinguished history. It starts with the first musings of David Ricardo and has advanced to now include models with […]

by Stormy Those that have been responsible for intelligent trade policy have “other irons” in the fire, namely, representing companies that have made a fortune outsourcing to China. From the EPIs Robert E. Scott (Senior International Economist and Director of International Programs, Economic Policy Institute) post at Huffington Post: “An op-ed published in http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/opinion/24massey.html?_r=1&ref=opinionThe New […]

originally posted at Economist’s view by Mark Thoma Stiglitz and Bilmes: The True Cost of the Iraq War Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes: The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond, by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, Commentary, Washington Post: Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the […]