The 47 senators who wrote their absurd ignorant improper and (almost) unprecedented letter in an attempt to undermine Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the (5)+1 are not traitors. The Constitution defines treason “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and […]

The Ezra Kleinless wonkblog remains excellent. In particular Matt O’Brien is about as young, smart, witty, and hard working as Klein. However, I think he may not have read everything. He notes that the allegedly reformicon tax plan includes the Bush tax cuts for the rich on steroids. Then he reviews recent, but only recent, […]

I am trying to think of issues on which there is a marked difference between the views typical of economists and those of non-economists. It is certainly true that non-economists (especially social scientists other than economists) think there are typical economists’ views. These views are held by a solid majority of professors at the University […]

February 23 Al Jazeera and The Guardian reported leaked memos from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency to the South African intelligence agency. The memos contradicted claims of fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently made in his UN Speech (the one with the illustration of cartoon bomb with a burning fuse). This post mainly points […]

Yes I am playing with FRED. My thoughts about the graph after the jump.

I am trying to understand what, if anything, was agreed by Greece and the rest of the EU yesterday. I’m not sure they even agreed to kick the can down the road. update 11:00 AM EST Tuesday 2/24/2015: It’s a deal. Greece has four more months without promising a 4.5% of GDP primary surplus. I […]

How much is a human life worth ? Michelle Chen links to and discusses a new study which concludes that welfare reform reduced life expectancy. I am reminded of an earlier study (there is overlap — the new study analysed the results of two actual experiments one of which was analysed in the old study)

At the NY Times Jeffrey Gettleman reports that people are using anti-malaria nets to fish (via Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice). After reading the headline but not the article (not wanting to be discouraged) I thought the problem was just that the pesticide treated nets were not being used to protect the people from malaria. […]

I am marking my beliefs to market as Brad DeLong does from time to time. One of my old beliefs whose market quotation has declined is extreme skepticism about the effectivenss of US monetary policy at the zero lower bound. This skepticism was largely caused by what I perceived to be the weak effects of […]

Update 1 pulled up here (Dean Baker says current dividends plus share buybacks are unsustainable) Update 2 Nick Bunker considers the dramatic example of Apple and the issue of unsustainable payouts to shareholders. The point of this post is to try to estimate the sustainable long run expected real return on US common stock. Historically, […]