ARAMCO CEO Is Delusional Financial Times reported yesterday that Amin Nasser, the CEO of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO, currently 100% owned by the Saudi government, although originally founded by four former US oil company majors), has declared that investors should feel pleased that Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman has arrested and purged over […]
The NY Times has an op ed entitled Can My Children Be Friends with White People?. (Dan here …Link corrected) I think this is the most interesting excerpt: …I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful […]
Via Washington Post on Progressive policies Of the many things that are terribly wrong with our current tax debate, one primary offender is the notion that tax cuts will unleash massive growth effects. If facts could kill this mythology, it would be long dead. … …but a great, new paper just landed on my desk that takes […]
I’ve noted before I have a bit of an interest in Baltimore because my wife originates from there (despite having convinced herself that she’s from the Los Angeles area). So I noticed this story: An alarming discovery coming out of City Schools. Project Baltimore analyzed 2017 state testing data and found one-third of High Schools […]
The post below is silly. It is based on bending over backwards to take silly arguments for the GOP tax plan seriously. This older post is the one with some relevance to the real world. The silly argument is that lower taxes on profits imply a lower cost of capital for firms. Investors will demand […]
Paul Krugman has been explaining (very slowly and clearly) that if the US attracts foreign investment by cutting taxes on profits, then it will have to pay the foreign investors. The Tax Foundation appears not to have noticed that loans are not gifts. First he quoted Stephen Rosenthal’s observation that the direct effect of cutting […]
The PayGo law forbids bills which increase the national debt. Unless it is repealed or waived, the Republican tax cuts would cause automatic sequestration of, among other funds $ 25 billion from Medicare. This is an excellent as usual Vox Explainer by Tara Golshan It all comes down to the “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO, rule — […]
We have virtually reached the singularity when virtual reality supplants reality. A photo tweeted by the Russian Ministry of Defense Tuesday as “irrefutable” proof that the United States has allied with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria turned out to be from a video game. Do android phones dream of electoral sheeple ? What […]
2018 Midterm election economic forecast: a struggling expansion that may amplify a wave We are now one year out from the 2018 midterm elections. Generally speaking, only the more involved voters show up for midterms, which seem to turn mainly on how much voters who “strongly” disapprove of actions in Washington outnumber those who “strongly” […]
Stranded Assets Rewind There’s a Dangerous Bubble in the Fossil-Fuel Economy, and the Trump Administration Is Making It Worse… “In reversing many of Obama’s keystone climate and environmental policies, Pruitt and Trump are conveniently ignoring these market signals in order to help out the fossil-fuel millionaires and billionaires who put them in office. Their actions […]