The Washington Post calls attention to changes in measuring international trade values: The U.S. trade deficit with China may be much smaller than thought according to new trade measurements that capture the flow of raw materials and intermediate goods as they work their way around the world into final products. In a significant revision to […]
by Linda Beale Trillion Dollar Coins, Fourteenth Amendment Powers, Executive Duties versus the Zanies on the Right who Want to Send us to Economic Purgatory: Krugman on the dysfunctional politics of the US economy Paul Krugman appeared on Bill Moyers PBS program Sunday night, talking sanely and rationally about the economy and why jobs (should) […]
Via TBogg comes this picture from the WSJ: Kudos to Xenos at Reading Is For Snobs for finding this graphic from the Wall Street Journal portraying the devastation inflicted upon The Poors in post-Fiscal Cliff Obama Socialism Nation:
Today, in another step forward, the National Review calls on Republicans to take the threat of default off the table: Republicans should recognize that the prospect of default is the Democrats’ chief weapon in their campaign of avoidance. That prospect is not a source of Republican leverage in the debt-ceiling fight; it is the primary […]
Okay. There’s no way to do justice to Washington Post centerist columnist Dana Milbank’s column today about Obama’s “presser” yesterday by just summarizing it or quoting a sentence or short paragraph from it. And justice for that column, titled “President Congeniality talks tough,” is what I want. So here are the first six (blessedly short) […]
Warning: a thought just came to me. It might be totally wrong. A little knowledge of the law is dangerous. The idea is that the Fed can buy US federal government issued securities at will so I think it could buy one random T-bill for $ 1 trillion if it chose to do so. The […]
The issue here is whether America pays its bills. We are not a deadbeat nation. … This is the United States of America. We can’t manage our affairs in terms of the way we pay our bills? … I don’t think anyone would consider my position unreasonable. — President Obama, today So President Obama does […]
In the recent debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” President Obama was reportedly at one point offering to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 and Social Security. However, in view of the coming retirement crisis due to the decline in defined benefit plans guaranteeing a specific retirement income, this is a […]
Here are reminders of Angry Bear posts and contrbutor thinking on “Wealth, debt,and consumption”. Wealth versus income Usually my articles present facts and data and try to drive down to a conclusion. This time, I’m going to drive down to a couple of questions. Income and consumption jazzbumba Part 1…spending as a fraction of net […]
From Reuters comes this piece on arms spending: Demand for big-ticket U.S. weapons is expected to stay strong for at least the next few years, the trade group said in a 2012 year-end review and forecast released in December.Fears resulting from China’s growing military spending (bolding mine…the US has about 4.8% spending to GDP ratio) […]