Wisconsin Supreme Court election update They seem to have gone to sleep over in Wisconsin. I did too but now I’m awake.The current state of the supreme court election is that 3,596 of 3,630 precincts have reported and the incumbent conservative Walker ally is Prosser is ahead of the challenger Kloppenberg by 733,074 to 732489, […]

Alternative title: Dog bites man. The results of a new CNN poll are still very interesting, since the poll is much more thorough than the many other polls which showed, more or less, the same thing. CNN has a write up where they note that the median respondent seems to think that much more money […]

The post after the jump will make “What More can the Ded do?” seem disciplined, succinct and sober. update: Minds think alike, but some bloggers are more concise than others — How About Prison Then ? The USA is in a tough spot with high unemployment, a sluggish recovery and an insane majority in the […]

In comments Mark Sadowski noted that short term real interest rates have fallen a lot since Ben Bernanke began announcing QE2. In earlier posts, I had considered only the 7 year constant maturity and the 5 year constant maturity series. I think that medium term real interest rates matter most for investment and that real […]

It has been asserted that many mortgage servicing contracts are inefficient, because they give the servicer incentives to foreclose even when re-negotiation would be better for the owner of the mortgage. An inefficiency is a profit opportunity. If there are such contracts, then a different contract can generate higher revenue for both the servicer and […]

This post is long, vague, sloppy and after the jump. The one sentence version is that the Fed can affect the real economy by buying assets which private investors consider risky. Before discussing useful things which I think the Fed can do to stimulate the economy, I will explain at length why I think that […]

Scott Sumner wrote If pressed, Keynesians will usually point to real interest rates as the right measure of monetary ease or tightness. By that criterion the Fed adopted an ultra-tight monetary policy in late 2008. Monetarists will usually say that M2 is the best criteria for the stance of monetary policy. By that criterion the […]

There is a new estimate of the effect of $ 60 billion spending cut on GDP and employment. Since this estimate was made by brilliant economist* Ben Bernanke aided by the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, it will get a lot of attention. Bernanke said that a $60 billion cut along the lines being […]

First I would like to stress again that I have great respect of Janet Yellen. I try to only critize people whom I respect (my posts show just how respectful I am in general). So this comment on her use of event studies is really a comment on event studies and not on Yellen in […]

Madison Wisconsin anti Scott Walker sign of the day via www.first-draft.com