If you look at the federal deficit as a share of GDP by presidential administration an interesting pattern emerges. Every Republican administration left office with a larger deficit than they inherited. Every Democratic administration left office with a smaller deficit than they inherited. Why should we pay any attention to anything any Republican says about […]

Good Jobs First has just issued a new report analyzing state investment incentive programs open to small and large businesses alike. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Shortchanging Small Business: How Big Businesses Dominate State Economic Development Incentives finds that 70% of the awards and 90% of […]

The New York Times’ report today by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin on Clinton’s, Sanders’s and O’Malley’s speeches last night at the annual Iowa Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Dinner includes this: “I’ve been told to stop shouting to end gun violence,” [Clinton] said, repeating a line she has begun using since Mr. Sanders said in the debate that “all […]

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called out Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Friday over his request that politicians “stop shouting” about gun control. During a speech at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Conference, Clinton implied that Sanders’ comments may even have had a sexist tinge. “I’ve been told to, and I quote, ‘stop shouting’ […]

Brad DeLong talks about how other economists view Fed interest rate policies as “price controls”. Then he makes a comparison to the present situation with on an example of a “price floor” in agricultural products. But are low interest rates a price floor or a price ceiling? If you think that interest rates need to […]

An economic slump or recession is considered a bad thing by economists. They point to Sweden and blame Sweden for raising its interest and causing a recession. “Bad Sweden, Bad Sweden”. But those economists are being short-sighted. They do not mention that Sweden is now doing much better than the rest of Europe. They have […]

The European Commission decided two of its major tax subsidy cases on Wednesday, October 21, and the rulings could not have been worse for Starbucks and Fiat (h/t Chillin’ Competition). These cases can be seen as a barometer of what is to come in the legally similar but much larger case of Apple, where potentially […]

Within an economy, there are different industries. and each industry would require a different central bank interest rate to function best. But there cannot be a different interest rate from a central bank for each and every industry. What happened when Sweden raised its interest rate? We hear that Sweden raised its interest rate a […]

With the earlier discussion of investments I thought a chart would be of interest. As you can see, investments grew until the Republicans started cutting taxes, supposedly to increase investments. (Cutting taxes to grow investments)