Ken Houghton follows up on his previous post. One of the few honest statements that came out of the Reagan Administration was in late 1982, when the Volcker policies were working but the market was still spooked. “People expect that inflation will be higher than it will be.” The above compares the University of Michigan’s […]
Ken Houghton notes that playing with data is dangerous. Predicting the future tends to be easy. There are several ways to do it. First, you can predict that everything will grow as it did this year—or last year, or the mean of the past x years. Or you can predict that it will be great […]
With all the talk of “Detroit,” you would think that Michigan would have lost the most employees, as a percentage of same, on the year. After all, the scariest graph of the U.S. MSAs isn’t scary for nothing. But the Regional and State Employment data is out for October (h/t CR), and there’s a different […]
Congratulations to Andrew Samwick of Capital Gains and Games for being named Professor of the Year in New Hampshire.
Suppose I make my monthly budget, and assume I’m going to spend $600 for food. At the end of the month, I discover that I only spent $520. I expected to take $80 out of savings that I now do not have to. My bank account is now $80 higher than I expected it to […]
And, if I were a better person, you would be reading my interview with David Kurla, CEO of IkoToilet/Ecotact in this space. But I’m not, so go to his website, especially the links for school, urban, and slum toilet provisions, and then see this John Sauer piece at the Huffington Post, and check out the […]
Moody’s had always assumed banks and their securities were “Too Big to Fail.” Not any more: Moody’s Investors Service will no longer assume that holders of the securities will benefit from government support to shore up troubled lenders, after the global financial crisis proved this wasn’t the case, Moody’s said in an e-mailed statement today. […]
Bob Somerby has been on a rant at The Daily Howler that “liberals” do not understand the Stupak Amendment. Unfortunately, claims he makes about Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and their guests do not apply to Laurie Rubner. At the Health Affairs blog, Ms. Rubner is direct and to the point: From the very beginning, […]
Passionate defenders, gather ye round: “Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: ‘one nation under God,’” said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. “Well, there’s a reason they put that right at the […]
No place to pahk the cah.