While I profess to being a Keynesian economist, I have never bought into the notion that fiscal stimulus is the only way to reverse a recession. Max Sawicky – who may be more Keynesian than yours truly – writes: My question in all this, which no conservatives are rushing to answer, is this: What sequence […]
This is one of those milestones (in some ways like the Dow breaching 10,000) that obviously means nothing from a strictly financial point of view, but is an important psychological threshold. If nothing else, this news draws our attention to the real story, which is the slow but steady upward march of interest rates that […]
Bruce Bartlett has been invited to contribute to the National Review: The question is ambiguous because it is not clear whether people are being asked about the effective rate of taxation (taxes as a share of income) or the marginal rate of taxation (that which applies to the last dollar earned). But either way, taxes […]
Phil Kerpen & Mallory Factor attack the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation citing two sources: The staggering costs of Sarbox bear repeating. An analysis by Sarbanes-Oxley Ivy Xiying Zhang of the University of Rochester measured the total stock market impact of the law, and found that it has cost over $1 trillion, with a “T.” About a third […]
After reading the recently released FOMC transcripts from the year 2000, Dr. Altig laments on The Woes Of Making Policy In Real Time. Dr. Altig also provides excerpts of Greg Ip’s FOMC transcript summary from the WSJ. In 2000, as the economy slowed from the booming ’90s, the Federal Reserve, for the most part, missed […]
Secretary Snow testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary on Wednesday: The economic indicators since the President signed the Jobs and Growth Act in May 2003 provide validity to this notion. Since that time, we have seen eleven straight months of positive business investment; nearly five […]
Josh Bivens says what I wish I had said!
Jim Hamilton covers a recent paper by Fed economist Jonathan Wright addressing exactly the question that I posed the other day: were interest rates more or less contractionary two months ago, when the yield curve was flat or slightly inverted but at lower interest rates, or today, when the yield curve is no longer inverted […]
As PGL notes, there was good news on the employment front this morning. The US economy continues to enjoy a respectable, though not spectacular, rate of job growth. Here’s the picture: For the past several months now the economy has generated more than the 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs needed each month to simply keep […]
Mickey Kaus thinks so: Earned Income Tax Credit does send cash to low income earners, but again you need to earn at least some money to get it. And it’s already pretty big. We probably can’t increase it much higher without running into cost and disincentive problems when the credit is phased out in the […]