Guest Post by MARK JAMISON at Save The Post Office Who owns the post office?  Who is the post office designed to serve?  What is the system’s ultimate function? These questions are fundamental to the future and the fate of the post office, the postal network, and postal services in this country. How we answer […]

I was intrigued by a very puzzling tweet (by @billmon1) which noted that Jonathan Chait had compared Benjamin Netanyahu to Yasser Arafat. I thought that a very odd comparison as they don’t seem similar to me, except for the part about participating in negotiotiations but never actually accepting a final peace agreement. But I now […]

Alice Rivlin has a wonderful speech about Fiscal & Monetary Policy in a Post-inflation World. Her basic point among many keen insights is that financial instability should be more of a priority now than inflation. I agree with her. Monetary policy should focus on the wild beasts of the economy, not the domesticated pets. Inflation […]

Preliminary election results from the Israeli elections are due in a couple of hours and no one who follows this even a little bit imagines that the path going forward is anything but fraught with uncertainty. Indeed it is not clear that given the polling that any stable government can be formed. But what is […]

Uber wonk Matt O’Brien writes about The “weird way people talk about zero interest rates” He discusses Gillian Tett discussing her conversations with those who O’Brien calls the “the masters of the universe.” They don’t like the Fed’s extremly low interest rate policy. They can’t claim that loose monetary policy has causes excessive inflation, so […]

The Tax Justice Network has just inaugurated a new blog, Fools’ Gold. It just came out with an excellent piece on taxes and Irish economic success in the “Celtic Tiger” era, written by Nick Shaxson. As I argued in 2011 and in my book Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital, Ireland had low […]

Continuing my efforts to demonstrate that a little knowledge of the law is a dangerous thing (and adding a superfluous Wald to the name of the AngryBear competent to discuss this) I wonder how and why Senators decided that the President must seek their advice and consent before performing any foreign policy (including for all […]