Steep drop in unemployment rate spawns conspiracy CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and SCOTT MAYEROWITZPublished: Today FILE – In this Sept. 27, 2006 file photo, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch addresses students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. Conspiracy theorists came out in force Friday, Oct. 5, 2012, after the government reported a […]

I leaned more than usual from this better than usual Ezra Klein post.  I knew that Romneycare was largely financed by the Federal Government, but I didn’t know how. The key question for any health-care plan is how are you going to pay for it? The Massachusetts plan used three funding sources. The first — and, […]

It is generally agreed that it was generally perceived that Mitt Romney won the first 2012 Presidential Debate.  One datum (two data ?) stood out however.  The CNN/ORC instant poll (pdf warning) in which respondents judged Romney the winner 67% to 25%.  This contrasts with a CBS instant poll (warning video) which offered the option […]

By popular demand*, I am picking on another pollster — Chilenski Stategies. There is a poll which is getting a lot of attention. The Chilenski Strategies poll of the Missouri Senate race which shows Todd “legitimate rape” Akin actually one point ahead of Senator Claire McCaskill. I have noted a large number of brand new […]

I have an embarrassing confession to make.  I forgot the date QE III was announced. I decided to graph the 3 year Tresury constant maturity interest rate.  The logic is that I don’t believe the current FOMC can plausibly precommit to policy more than around three years from now.  Most members’ terms end in January […]

It appears that in the conservasphere Rasmussen polling is called “Rasmussen the most accurate pollster.”  In fact Rasmussen had the best performance in 2008.  This was widely noted. However Rasmussen performed terribly in 2010.  If one focused solely on the final poll issued by Rasmussen Reports or Pulse Opinion Research in each state — rather […]

I am aware of the internet tradition called the 27% Crazification Factor which is undead and well But can we get a solid lower bound on the sane (OK really well informed) factor ?  For example, there was the February 2010  New York Times CBS News poll in which 12% of respondents correctly noted that Obama […]

What kind of econotroll are you ? This is a must read.  I honestly did laugh out loud.

Romney paid 14.1% of his income and capital gains as tax in 2011.  But I wonder I hope I wish that all of that was capital gains tax and none of it was income tax.  What goes around comes around and he who equates paying zero federal income tax with paying no taxes had better […]

OK just to bring it all together, in Boca Raton Mitt Romney demonstrated that he didn’t know the very latest news about quantitative easing. Kevin Drum reads the transcript so we don’t have to On May 17 2012 Romney: Yeah, it’s interesting… the former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the […]