It’s not just that you make a mistake; it’s that you cling desperately to that mistake and let it define you. Katrina revealed George W. Bush’s basic incompetence in a way that 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq had not. So he was weak going into the 2006 midterms. There were going to be losses. No one […]
[Expletive Deleted]. It will be interesting to see whether the Libya of Brad DeLong and Juan Cole’s beliefs produces a respectable opposition leader—one of the surer signs of rule by the people—before Canada does.* UPDATE: Via Amy Wilkins Twitter feed, Layton’s final words. Can anyone imagine the 2011 Obama** being able to say this: You […]
Refinance rates (list) for 15-year Fixed Rate Mortgage in my area: Bank of America 3.625% JPMorganChase 4.125% And that’s if everything is right.
Fitch won’t downgrade the U.S., but they have downgraded Chirstiedom, officially because he didn’t pillage the state’s severely-underfunded Pension Funds enough. Of course, those Pension Funds wouldn’t be so underfunded if they had been funded instead of f*ck*d by the Whitman Administration’s Coke-Induced Budgeting Practices. (The “miracle of compound interest” includes that it doesn’t compound […]
by Mike Kimel Most economists believe that unemployment benefits increase the unemployment rate. The idea is that even having a relatively small income coming in (from unemployment) can encourage people to stay jobless just a little while longer. And no doubt there are people who play the unemployment compensation game fairly well. Now, consider severance […]
Scott Lemieux linked to an article that in turn referenced a BEA report on state GDP gains with this map: or, if you just want to see the numbers, “Growth only slightly lower than Michigan’s” should be a great campaign slogan.* *And that’s ignoring that the second-largest contributor to that gain is Finance and Insurance. […]
The real story of Michelle Bachmann’s “win” in the Iowa straw poll (not to be confused with the Iowa primary) isn’t that she got just over 4,800 votes—it’s that she paid for 6,000, proving at least 1,200 Iowa straw pollers are smarter than most of the reporters covering her “win.” Late to the party mention: […]
With a hat tip to Tim Harford, The General Manchester Police are reporting their already-public-record convictions via Twitter (@gmpolice). On a quick check, four of the eleven so far convicted (including the one woman), are over 35. So far: It appears that legendary “moral decay” began under Margaret Thatcher. Whodathunkit? Well, maybe David Cameron in […]
The bad news of the day is that about $5B ($5,000,000,000) more than previously believed went to buy goods made in China, Japan, non-major South and Central American countries, and other places outside the U.S. Per the Vampire Squid (tm Matt Taibbi), this should cause a revision to Q2 US GDP from 1.3% to 0.9%. […]
Or, Barack Obama sucks at 11-dimensional chess. On July 14, 2011, S&P was assuming that 2001 and 2003 tax fraud deferrals would expire at the end of 2012 [Update: link updated, via MG; PDF–see page 4]. It is no longer making that assumption, which is worth another $4T. Brad DeLong annotates/redlines the press release without […]