rdan The Detroit Free Press carries this statement: “The UAW is deeply disappointed that Senate Republicans have blocked the bipartisan legislation that was agreed to by President Bush and congressional Democrats. “In an effort to work out a compromise, the UAW was prepared to agree that any restructuring plan should ensure that the wages and […]
rdan The AP reports that the 15 billion is not available to the auto companies: Their efforts in Congress squashed, U.S. automakers are depending upon a reluctant White House to quickly provide a multibillion lifeline to help them avoid imminent collapse. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, which have said they could run out of […]
rdan hat tip vtcodger, who adds “All the focus on cars is on the Big Three whose CEOs will lay out their begging mats in Washington today. But imports aren’t doing so great either.” But these are not ordinary times. (NYT) For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands […]
by Robert Waldmann My post on “what the hell are credit default swaps for” got lots of comments and I learned a lot from the comment thread. I continue my effort at remedial education via blogging. First a very simple article by Martin HutchisonDoes this guy know what he is writing about ? Key quote […]
Soc Sec XXXVI: $17 Trillion Backward Transfer was a response to a comment by Jim Glass (scrivener.net) to a post by Andrew Biggs. Andrew responded with a new post attempting to rebut my argument. You can see the whole thing at Responding to Angry Bear: Where does $17 trillion come from including my response to […]
Infrastructure – The Next Big Deal? #1 Reuters carries a report on an infrastrucutre concern: The worst Midwest flooding since 1993 has generated images of swamped towns, cracked roads, washed-out bridges, overwhelmed dams, failed levees, broken sewage systems, stunted crops and water-logged refugees. The losses are in the billions of dollars and still mounting, as […]
The NBER committee that officially determines the dates for recessions has a few favorite, or key indicators that it gives much more weight. One of the indicators is real manufacturing and trade sales. Not many people pay much attention to it because it does not have its own press release and wall street traders do […]
Kash suggests that Greg Mankiw was not careful in his beer drinking example: The first and second men (the poorest) used to pay $0.20. Now they pay only $0.15 (a savings of $0.05, or 23%). They must then pay an additional $0.16 somewhere down the road. The third and fourth men (the next poorest) used […]
As I read Brad DeLong fulfilling the plea from Jonah Goldberg: Well, we want to put up more quotes from the pages of NR, past, present and future there I had to wonder. Brad is a very good economist and yet he provided quotes about NR’s racism and love for Joseph McCarthy but nothing on […]
David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal is feeling bearish this morning: Every so often, economic forces and financial markets collide in ways that make for a tumultuous year — the stock market crash in 1987, the Asian financial crisis and bond-market paralysis in 1998, the bursting stock bubble in 2000. Suddenly, this year has […]