Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Paul Krugman Gets Berned. Er, Burned.

In a speech to a Morgan Stanley group on April 18, 2013, WikiHillary praised the Simpson­Bowles deficit reduction plan, which included reforming the tax code to increase investment and entrepreneurship and raising certain taxes and trimming some spending and entitlements to make them more sustainable. The ultimate shape of that grand bargain could take many […]

No, Mr. Trump, THIS is what a movement looks like

There it was.  That familiar logo, the one I’d seen on so many lawn signs and bumper stickers in my (very) liberal small-city college town, and at the top of so many emails I’d received since early summer 2015.  The logo with “Bernie” in sky blue, with a little star over the “I” instead of […]

Yellen wants to understand effective demand

Janet Yellen gave a speech where she posed 4 questions to economists in general seeking answers… The first question she asked was this… “The Influence of Demand on Aggregate Supply The first question I would like to pose concerns the distinction between aggregate supply and aggregate demand: Are there circumstances in which changes in aggregate […]

Anthropomorphic Mexico

WASHINGTON — In June of 2010, four boys were playing in the dry bed of the Rio Grande that separates El Paso from Juárez, Mexico. The international borderline, unmarked, runs through the middle of the culvert. The boys dared one another to run up a concrete incline and touch the barbed wire of the American […]

A glitch in the IS-LM model

Many top economists use the IS-LM model to support low interest rates. The LM curve of the IS-LM model is built upon a model of financial markets. In the graph above, money supply has been pushed far to the right to keep interest rates low. The model implies that the money supply would eventually have […]

On the Malleability of Cultural Traits – a Look at Irish-British and German-Americans

Authored by Mike Kimel The way the immigration process was structured from 1921 to 1965, 70% of immigrants to the US came from Britain, Germany and Ireland.  In a recent post I noted that the proportion of great writers to scientists in Ireland tended to be a lot higher than for Britain and Germany.  I […]

John McCain Says He’s Glad a 5-4 Supreme Court Majority Fabricated a Constitutional Ground to Strike Down Most of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law as Unconstitutional

Awesome. And to think that earlier today I was still worried that the Dems won’t retake control of the Senate.

Okay, so how many of the 53 percent of voters who say they want a Republican Congress to thwart Clinton’s policy agenda have any idea what that policy agenda IS? Just wonderin’.

But those same polls [suggesting a Clinton lead] don’t suggest doom and gloom for down-ballot Republicans just yet. And in fact, there’s real reason for GOP optimism that Trump won’t ruin their year completely. … For one, the so-called generic ballot — i.e., whether people prefer a generic Democrat for Congress or a generic Republican […]