Ken writes that Ezra Klein has turned into a Fred Hiatt Jr. I was inclined to differ. As evidence, I considered linking to To govern responsibly, the White House will need to negotiate like Republicans That doesn’t sound like Hiatt. Then I got to the policy proposal The White House should announce that it won’t […]
GOP Delays Debt Limit Vote After Damaging CBO Score
National Journal Reports When President Obama told Americans to contact their representatives to show support for his debt-ceiling plan, the response was so strong it knocked out several websites for leading GOP House members. National Journal checks at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. of websites for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Whip Kevin […]
Republicans are crazier than I imagine possible even taking into account the fact that they are crazier than I imagine possible. Concept due to Brad Delong It appears that the debt ceiling deal under consideration includes $ 1 trillion in cuts, no tax increases and setting up a committee to pretend that there will be […]
The latest Washington Post ABC poll has some dramatic results ” Even among Republicans, 58 percent see the GOP as too resistant to a deal, up from 42 percent in March. In the new poll, fully 50 percent of conservative Republicans and “strong” tea party supporters say the GOP leadership is too unwilling to make […]
I just couldn’t resist clicking “Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion settlement over mortgages”. Finally the Bankers are paying for destroying the economy. My enthusiasm rapidly faded as I read the article. Then I read “Shares of Bank of America Corp. jumped more than 4 percent, or 48 cents to $11.30 before the market […]
There is an absolutely serious hypothesis that the sharp drop in violent crime in the USA since the early 1990s is due to the EPA and, in particular, to the shift from leaded to unleaded gasoline roughly two decades earlier. Kevin Drum notes that James Q. Wilson ascribes about half of the total decline to […]
Another edition of my diatribe on QE-II. Here I reply to Noah in comments who discussed debt deflation and also explain my guess about what happened going beyond the evidence. Why does expected inflation matter (so that we should be pleased at an increase in nominal interest rates not matched by an equal increase in […]
I think this article “GOP freshmen get a tough lesson in politics” by David Fahrenthold in the Washington Post perfectly illustrates everything which is wrong with US political journalism. The theme of the article is explained as follows “the same hoarse-throat tactics that helped them bring down incumbents last year — attacks on a health-care […]
Post stimulated by Steve Benen. Content due to John Quiggin. This is arithmetic “Arithmetic tells us there are two ways to achieve the goal: the government can bring in more money and put out less.”This isn’t “a combination of cuts and tax increases were necessary when the deficit got really big” Revenue doesn’t come from […]