Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Social Security Defender Shared Files

Who or what is ‘Social Security Defender’? Well it is basically a G-mail account controlled by me: socsec.defender@gmail.com . Which is kind of pretentious and vainglorious on my part but does allow a platform for some attached products including the blog Social Security Defender and a Google Drive. In which as an experiment I have […]

Interest Rates, Mortgage Refinancing and Consumption

This is a discussion in a comment thread which I think is worth pulling back. I claimed (as I often do) that interest rates do not have noticeable effects on consumption. Please notice the “noticeable” — it is an appeal to standard econometric analysis of aggregate time series. OK the discussion EMichael January 16, 2015 […]

Social Security Report Tables & Figures: a Project Sample – Table V.B2

Table V.B2: Additional Economic Assumptions Well I am back and working on a new project in anticipation of the release of the 2015 Report this late Spring. The project involves extracting the Tables and Figures from the Social Security Trustees Report, in this case the 2014, and having them individually web accessible as spreadsheeets or […]

Public schools

Via Alternet: New data reveals our public—not private—school system is among the best in the world. In fact, except for the debilitating effects of poverty, our public school system may be the best in the world. The most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveal that the U.S. ranked high, relative […]

Secular Stagnation, The US Recovery, and Houses

Larry Summers and Brad DeLong have even more than usually stimulating thoughts about secular stagnation and extremely low interest rates. I notice a strong focus on non residential fixed capital investment. disclaimer: I owe debts I can never repay to both of them, so this post might even be civil. Summers responds to Marc Andreesen […]

Which Party Is Better for the Economy? by state

Guest post by Nathan Salminen (is a lawyer and an amateur economic and political researcher. Nathan has been politically active for many years, including working for the Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a law clerk. Nathan currently practices law in New York and runs Politics that work.) Dan here…this is the second part to […]