This is more or less relevant to Beverly’s post from earlier today. How many times have you heard Boehner, McConnell, Ryan or one of the legion of right-wing talking heads say, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem?” I refuted that lie repeatedly in this AB post and at the included […]
I’m actually agnostic on this choice. The always excellent Charles Pierce makes a good case for Hagel, but why should Obama go for any Republican? This just continues to promote the canard that Republicans are somehow stronger or more capable on defense issues than Democrats. The irony here is that the greatest opposition is coming […]
On Wednesday, December 19, 2012 Robert Heron Bork died at age 85. I did not mourn. Bork first became infamous in 1973 for his role in the “Saturday night massacre” when as Solicitor General, the number three position in the Justice Department, he carried out, under President Nixon’s orders, the firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor […]
We are a country not just divided, but fragmented along axes of race, age, religion, economic status and geography. There are now 15 States where citizens have filed petitions to secede from the Union. “These include Louisiana (which led the charge), the Republic of Texas, Kentucky, Colorado, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Mississippi, North […]
It has been suggested that the rapid increase in the prices of fish, fowl, meat and eggs for about two years following October, 2009 was the result of QE causing inflation in these items. From this Calculated Risk graph, we can get the QE date line. QE was announced on Nov 25, 2008, and expanded […]
Mike’s post here got me thinking. I’ll telegraph my conclusion. He dramatically understated his case. You can see the long range view of nominal and inflation adjusted GPD growth in Graph 1 of FRED quarterly YoY percent change data. Graph 1 YoY growth Nominal and Inflation Adjusted GDP Nominal GDP Growth was in a secular […]
Art at The New Arthurian Economics and I are looking at the relationship between debt and economic growth. Art started with an observation of two FRED series, total credit market debt owed (TCMDO) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP, nominal or GDPC1, inflation adjusted – take your pick.) Graph 1, from FRED, shows these data series. […]
If you listen to Randi Rhodes, you know she is still livid over Romney being declared the “winner” in last week’s – we’ll call it a “debate” for the nonce. Alas, though, the reason he won is that poll numbers have moved in his favor. Whether that bounce is robust remains to be seen. But […]
In comments to my previous post, Robert requested the unsmoothed data from Graph 3. Here it is. GPDI is plotted against the Capital Gains Tax Rate. Since the Capital Gains Tax Rate (X-axis) is quantized, the result is columns of data. Compared to the smoothed version, there is little change in either the slope or […]
Matt Yglesias, servitor to our corporate overlords, suggests that the reduced capital gains tax rate paid by rentiers like Willard Romney is really a very, very good thing. To wit: The main reason Romney’s effective rate is so low is that the American tax code contains a lot of preferences for investment income over labor […]