The New Economist provides links to a piece by Michael Mandel noting his usual argument that the national income account definitions understate savings as well as a reply from Brad Setser and the Michael’s reply to Brad. As you will notice in a moment, I’m a bit biased to what Brad said so let me […]
Credit goes to James Hamilton for what may be the best takedown of the gold bugs over at the National Review I’ve seen yet: What’s behind the ongoing run-up in gold prices? One popular interpretation is that investors fear a resurgence of U.S. inflation. But that story just doesn’t square with the facts … I […]
Menzie Chinn gets the last word on the most recent news regarding employment growth – except for the fact that I’ll do a small summary of one aspect of his post that took a longer view of the revised payroll survey figure – with my own graph of this revised series from October 2000 to […]
In the spirit of Brad DeLong’s course on economics reporting, I noticed this morning that Joel Havemann of the LA Times does a reasonably good job providing some context against which to measure the Bush administration’s budget rhetoric: Bush Budget Plan Strikes Home, Not Deficit WASHINGTON — President Bush today will propose a $2.7-trillion budget […]
Unless there is some new math that really does say 1.08 divided by 131 equals 6%, Max Sawicky is having fun with Steve Antler. But his On Reaganomics and Supply-side is truly sad as he simply accepts the latest spin from the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal as evidence as to the following […]
CalculatedRisk previewed the latest UCLA Anderson Forecast and Dr. Leamer is concerned that residential investment demand will decline – especially in California. Lawrence Kudlow suggests that Leamer and CalculatedRisk are “bubbleheads”. Kudlow gives a couple of interesting reasons for questioning forecasts of weak residential investment, but he also provides the following strange logic: Although year-to-date […]
Eduardo Porter’s New York Times article entitled Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions describes how one Mexican citizen – along with perhaps seven million other “illegal immigrant” workers: are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year … Most immigration helps Social Security’s finances, because new […]