Stop reading this. I said its for Bruce Webb. Stop. Stop, I said. You’re still reading, aren’t you? Yeah, you. $%#^ busybodies. Bruce, Drop me a line. The e-mail address I have for you is outdated. Thanks. cactus

…in the course of responding to a linked Fallows piece in theAtlantic in comments at Ezra’s I ran across a very intriguing chartfrom Treasury Fallows was putting out the standard line: We buy toys from China,China turns around and finances our deficit, ultimate end resulttrainwreck. Well oddly enough the numbers don’t support that at leastfor […]

Hoisted from comments, Bruce Webb writes… The Economic Right as represented by Sowell are getting desperate and as such are petulently lashing out. The key to understanding their thinking is that they don’t see inequality as something to be resisted. In their ideology cream rises to the top while the markets allocate returns on productivity […]

In comments, Bruce Webb tells us he has links to theAnalysis of the SS Trustee’s report up. First consider the Cost of Nothing. The 2005 Report projected a payroll gap up from 2004, to 1.92% from 1.89%. Which is what you would expect, problem left unaddressed got worse. But if you quantified it you ended […]

Following in Brad de Long’s noble tradition of hoisting from comments, what follows are Bruce Webb’s comments to a PGL post from earlier today. The Bureau of Public Dept just released Nov 30 balances in the OAS and DI Trust Funds OAS (Survivor/Old Age)$1,835,219,251,439.91up just under $9 billion for the month.DI (Disability)$204,008,148,674.27down about $200 million […]

Was President Bush technically correct when he declared the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF) bankrupt? In one corner, we have Victor and Andrew Samwick who defend Bush’s use of this term. In the other corner, we have Max Sawicky warning Professor Samwick about his Kool-Aid and Brad Setser extending the definitions to the discussion over […]