How did the German hyperinflation end ? I think the best but totally biased source of information is The Stabilization of the Mark by Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (just look at the price !?! to understand how German’s felt). The book could be entitled “How I Did It” but the point is that he did […]

At Balloon Juice, Doug Harlan J wrote I’ve seen posters around for Kaplan test prep where it lists a bunch of answers and says “if you think you have to know the question to know the answer, you need to visit Kaplan”. That is the correct answer. The question is after the jump. The question […]

What is wrong with this sentence ? It is true that making the headline corporate income tax rate lower would be a good idea since that might give us a less distortionary tax code,, but in light of the long-term budget crunch that means we need to make up for any rate cuts by closing […]

This is pure speculation (also called theory). I have no respect for economic theory definitely including my own efforts, so the post will all be after the jump. I will write about, sketch and definitely not write out a model in which Fed purchases of 7 year Treasury notes causes low investment. It happens to […]

I am not able to get anyone to debate me on monetary policy in a liquidity trap. Therefore I resort to crude provocation. I recall two claims about monetary policy which were not controversial until this year. First that the effects of a shift in monetary policy peak after roughly 6 months. Second that it […]

Paul Krugman To be fair, applying maximizing thinking has achieved some major successes even in macroeconomics. The permanent income/life cycle style of consumption theory does a much better job of accounting for the stylized facts about spending than the old, mechanical consumption function. The natural rate hypothesis, with its crucial implication that high inflation would […]

This is new. This post by Matthew Ygelsias isn’t about monetary policy, and I don’t find it convincing at all. He wrote if you raise high-end marginal rates while leaving deductions alone, what you do is massively increase the value of the deductions. The home mortgage interest tax deduction, for example, is both distributively regressive […]

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 […]