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

Advance Reading Copies

by Mike Kimel Help!!!! The publisher has put together some Advance Reading Copies of Presimetrics. They’re bound-up versions of the book usually sent out to media for an advance read on the book. Obviously, they’d like my co-author and I to get them into the hands of the most influential people possible for them to […]

Federal Government Stupidity – Part 2

Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Federal Government Stupidity – Part 2Part 2 of an occasional series When Verizon wanted to merge with Alltel the feds allowed the merger but created a bizarre and weird system that disallowed most Verizon stores from servicing Verizon customers. How this increases competition eludes me. So my son is traveling and […]

The BP Oil Leak and Tea-Party/Business-Republican Politics

by Beverly Manncrossposted with The Annarborist The BP Oil Leak and Tea-Party/Business-Republican Politics “The only good news from the oil spill is that when catastrophe strikes, even some hard-line conservatives, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, start begging for the federal government to act, and act big. It’s the crunch moment for government to make […]

Federal Government Stupidity – Part 1

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Federal Government Stupidity – Part 1Part 1 of an occasional series The “war on drugs” isn’t working so well. But fear not, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has a clever plan to stop the flow of illegal drugs. The DEA is harassing nursing home nurses who take oral narc orders […]

Stock Market Expectations

Which view of the stock market to you take? On the one hand there is the fundamental interest rate, inflation approach. It says that the market overreacted to the two shocks of Greece and Deepwater Horizon and is now cheap.The S&P 500 PE on trailing operating earnings is now 16.5, and according to the traditional […]

Economic Growth Rates, The President’s Party and the Party that Controls Congress

by Mike Kimel Economic Growth Rates, The President’s Party and the Party that Controls CongressCross-posted at the Presimetrics blog. This post looks at economic growth rates by President and party. However, it also looks at how that growth rate is affected by which party controls Congress. (This is a topic covered in a lot of […]

Dem fund raisers…a WTF moment?

NY Post reports That White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met Sunday night at the apartment of Jane Hartley and Ralph Schlosstein with Dem fund-raisers such as Orin Kramer, Stan Shuman, Roger Altman, Ann Hess, Robert Zimmerman, Pete Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney. Good grief. Pete Peterson a Dem fundraiser? Who is getting his […]

Opinions on shape of proper stimulus differ. Both sides have a point.

Robert Waldmann As he watches policy makers cry “fire fire” in Noah’s flood, Paul Krugman becomes almost shrill. He has a simple (rigorous) model which suggests more stimulus would be ideal and that, when in a liquidity trap, government spending should be set to give unemployment equal to the non accelerating rate of unemployment. In […]

Automation patterns…any figures?

Market Watch reports: Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday said it will invest $1 billion to consolidate and automate its data centers, a move that will lead to the elimination of 9,000 jobs over a “multiyear” period. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and printing giant /quotes/comstock/13*!hpq/quotes/nls/hpq (HPQ 45.59, +0.01, +0.02%) said annual savings in its enterprise-services division […]