It’s official: President Obama has proposed cutting Social Security by replacing the program’s current inflation adjustment with the stingier “chained” Consumer Price Index. As I’ve discussed before, this risks undoing all the progress made against senior poverty since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. 25% of seniors were poor according to official poverty […]

by Linda Beale Obama caves yet again: offering Social Security cuts to appease the right… Obama’s budget isn’t even released yet and he’s already caving to the “let’s make the rich richer and forget the rest” crowd.  That crowd that claims that we need a capital gains preference so the rich can gather all that […]

The headline numbers in the employment report were very weak as  payroll employment rose by only 88,000  and the household survey reported a -206,000 drop in employment while the labor force fell by -496,000.  The futures markets are reacting very badly.  But the workweek expanded and aggregrate hours worked increased 0.3% as compared to 0.5% […]

This was one of the better employment reports of this cycle.  Private payroll employment grew 246,00while  government employment fell about 10,000 for a net gian of of 236,000.  The household survey also showed a nice gain of 170,000.   On a year over year change basis both series are showing nice gains. You would never […]

This was another tepid employment report not much different than the reports in 2012. Payroll employment rose 168,000 and the household survey showed a gain of only 17,000   Private payrolls expanded 168,000 while government employment fell 9,000.  Perhaps more importantly the year over year change in employment is showing significant signs of weakness,  Both […]

At first glance the December employment report shows that the trends throughout 2012 were unchanged in December.  But within the report there were some greater signs of strength. Private payroll employment showed a gain of 155,000 and the household survey reported a much smaller gain of only 28,000.  These changes are about the same  as […]

Andrew Sullivan writes something interesting.* No not that Andrew Sullivan, this Andrew Sullivan at Reuters. Fairly excerpted, I think. in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888. It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, [skip] a federal government […]

The lead article in the current AER is available here (gated, apparently, though the link isn’t working; h/t Tom Bozzo [on FB] and Brad DeLong; I was using the paper copy). The most interesting part so far: the authors only considered the documented costs of air pollution—not land, not water—in deriving the (embarrassingly negative) ROI […]

By: Daniel Becker In answer to the generic question regarding President Obama’s actions regarding the debt ceiling, I am re-posting this from 2/25/09.  In comments of the original I stated that cutting the deficit by 1/2 seemed to “optimistic” for me. *************************** Ok, here are my basic issues with the substance of President Obama’s speech. […]

Reposted from New Deal 2.0 with permission from author. Deficit Hawks Down: The Misconstrued “Facts” Behind Their Hype by James K. Galbraith Economist James K. Galbraith attends a Pete Peterson-funded road show. The Fiscal Solutions Tour is the latest Peter G. Peterson Foundation effort to rouse the public against deficits and the national debt — […]