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

New Milestone: Majority of Public School Students Now Considered Low-Income

Via Southern Education Foundation: Students are eligible for free meals if they live in households with no more than 135 percent of the poverty level, and they qualify for reduced-price meals if household income is no more than 185 percent of the poverty level. In 2013, the federal poverty threshold was $23,550 for a family […]

US 76, EU 6

No, it’s not a sports score. It’s the number of $100 million incentive packages offered in each place beginning in 2010. This is based on my first paper to use the February 2015 update of Good Jobs First’s Megadeals database (you can download the entire update in spreadsheet form). I’ve said before that U.S. investment […]

To fix or not to fix: Jeffry Frieden’s “Currency Politics”

by Joseph Joyce To fix or not to fix: Jeffry Frieden’s “Currency Politics” The decision by the Swiss National Bank to abandon its peg to the euro serves as an example of the relatively limited life spans of fixed exchange rate regimes. While the fragility of exchange rate commitments has been known since the publication […]

Stock Buybacks and the Equity Premium

Update 1 pulled up here (Dean Baker says current dividends plus share buybacks are unsustainable) Update 2 Nick Bunker considers the dramatic example of Apple and the issue of unsustainable payouts to shareholders. The point of this post is to try to estimate the sustainable long run expected real return on US common stock. Historically, […]

Game Theory and the Filibuster

Ed Kilgore, who is not a hypocrite, still advocates limited use of the filibuster even now that Republicans have a Senate majority. He wrote The filibuster has always been a monstrous but mitigated abuse—monstrous in its antidemocratic pretensions but mitigated by rare use. I see little reason for its use right now when the president […]

Federal Reserve SOMA Holdings of the Long Bond

It is well known that the Federal Reserve in its three rounds of QE (and especially the first two) aggressively bought Treasury Notes and Bonds or collectively the ‘Long Bond’ of 10 Years and longer. But there has been relatively little discussion of what that means for such things as Federal Government Net Interest etc. […]

Open thread Feb. 9, 2014

Well, my west of Boston town has had about 75 inches of snow in the last couple weeks.  Any one have stories??   I believe Kenneth Thomas has moved to Boston a week or so before the storms, and “what a welcome!” pops into mind  for someone from the St. Louis area.

Does Clinton Really Have People Around Her Who Think Elizabeth Warren Is a Man? Yikes.

Some people around Clinton assume that any skepticism about her candidacy has to do with latent sexism, but I’m pretty sure that’s not my issue, either. Last week, my 6-year-old daughter informed me that she couldn’t be president because she’s a girl. So believe me, if Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office on the […]