John Tamny starts his latest op-ed with some wisdom from Herbert Stein: Seeking to shift blame away from the Federal Reserve and the Nixon White House for the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the late Herbert Stein said, “My devotion to the old-time religion is not so great as to make me believe that […]
Reading the news this morning I feel like we’re reliving the Carter years. The drop in consumer sentiment reported today by the University of Michigan, as well as Bush’s dismal approval ratings, both seem like echoes from the late 1970s. From Marketwatch: Consumer sentiment plunges to 7-month low WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – U.S. consumers’ attitudes about […]
Greg Kaza is elated that the politicians will start (ab)using dynamic scoring: Dynamic scoring, however, attempts to measure the feedback-effects ignored in these models – those feedback-effects potentially becoming excellent ammunition for supply-side policymakers and tax-cut advocates. There’s no doubt that dynamic scoring is today being taken seriously within the budgeting community … More importantly, […]
The FOMC (the interest rate-setting committee at the Fed) raised the Federal Funds rate to 5.0% today. Here’s the important bit of the accompanying statement: Economic growth has been quite strong so far this year. The Committee sees growth as likely to moderate to a more sustainable pace, partly reflecting a gradual cooling of the […]
Max Sawicky had some fun with Rush Limbaugh over whether Big Oil gets $0.09 per gallon or a 9% operating margin. Unless a gallon of gasoline costs $1, there has to be a difference between these two statements. In his comment box, Max linked to something from ConocoPhillips: An industry-wide study in the late 1990s […]
Peter Ferrara says blame “liberals and regulation” and trust the supply-side cure: Over the past thirty years, extreme-left liberals have successfully shut down new energy production in the United States … The liberals also have stoked “Not in My Backyard” concerns in order to stop the building of new oil refineries … Finally, we now […]
The Employment Situation Summary for April 2006 reports that employment per the payroll survey rose by 138,000. The household survey shows an increase of only 47,000. I wish I had better new for this Cinco de Mayo. I also want to know what the heck CNN means by this: But the report had one reading […]
Max Sawicky had a fitting tribute to the late John Kenneth Galbraith and linked to several others. This may be a little on the late side, but I was truly insulted by the National Review’s version of an obituary for Professor Galbraith, which was to replay this September 2001 smear from William Buckley. Consider, for […]
Bill Polley links to the New York Times obituary for the former host of Wall Street Week. Like Bill, I used to watch Lou’s show faithfully. NPR ran an old interview when Lou gave three pieces of sage of advice to those of us who might try to discuss economics to the general public: Rule […]
Via Mark Thoma comes a debate between David Frum and Bruce Bartlett as to the prospects of achieving fiscal responsibility through cuts in government spending. The short answer is that we cannot. Let’s have Mr. Frum up first: In the 1990s, the newly elected Republican congressional majority enjoyed what we can now see was the […]