The Italian prime minister just won a vote of confidence in Parliament. It surprises almost no one who lives in Italy that investors weren’t pleased. The associated Press has a great quote The best signal that Italy could have sent to the markets would have been to boot Mr. Berlusconi out, but it has failed […]

Reuters posted (and has since updated) an article on alleged financial connections between George Soros and Occupy Wall Street (OWS). The article illustrates much of what is wrong with English language journalism. Felix Salmon wrote a devastating critique (just click the link and read it) Felix Salmon works for Reuters. To me the news is […]

Who are the 53% ? Erick Erickson claims that they are the 53% who pay positive income taxes which, he suggests, are the same people who disagree completely with the occupiers of Wall Street The Bloomberg poll says they are the fraction of self identified Republicans who support raising taxes on family income over $250000 […]

The Washington Post had two articles on their latest poll. The first focused on the Presidential horse race. The second noted that US adults disapprove of congress and then went on to discuss other results. At the very end of the the second article this follows: Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on millionaires to help […]

In this excellent post, John Quiggin somewhat understates his claim The key passage “the same fundamental confusion I pointed out last time, trying to claim that rationality assumptions are both important and unfalsifiable.” and later at greater length “Williamson wants to have his cake and eat it. Most of the time he wants to help […]

Brad DeLong and Matthew Yglesias report that operation Twist worked, because 30 year bond yields have declined since it was announced. Brad “30y Treasury yield down 13 bps, 2y yield up 5bps. Exactly what you would expect with announcement of twist operation.” So Brad why were you so sure that the 30y yield would not […]

Elaine Kamarck wrote an article in The Washington Monthly’s blog “Ten Miles Square” entitled “NO Time to Go Wobbly on Welfare Reform” Briefly for those who have not clicked the link, the article stresses that TANF (aka welfare) is a very small component of the social welfare safety net (as was AFDC before welfare reform). […]

Buy Greek bonds. I am very suspicious of proposals that the Fed do more to save the economy which do not specify what. They seem to be based on the idea that expanding Fed liabilities would be useful no matter what assets the Fed buys. I am convinced that Fed purchases are useful if and […]

The Census Bureau has released estimates of poverty in 2010. Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.7% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on record (the […]

I don’t understand my fellow US citizens. Many commenters will note that they told me that I didn’t since I don’t live in the USA, but I didn’t when I lived there. After the jump I try and fail to make sense of the latest NBC/WSJ poll. The nickel summary is that I thought that […]