The other day I dissed the analysis in Reinhart and Rogoff’s Growth in a Time of Debt as being on the level of a blog post from an amateur internet econocrank. I still hold that opinion. But I want to walk back on that, or at least clarify, and give lots of credit where due. Because they did make […]

Re-posted from last year is Dan Becker’s post: Due Process: Holder vs Colbert. Art or Reality. Choose. This is the object: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury,… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due […]

I finally figured out a simple way to explain my confusion (and that of many others, including many economists) with the whole Saving issue. I may also have figured out a useful solution to that confusion, which I present at the bottom here for my gentle readers’ delectation and denunciation. Econ profs: I’m really curious. […]

This is a re-posting of a Bruce Webb post from January, 2010.  A reminder of a well crafted plan to date: Seven Steps to Social Security cuts via Debt Commission For those of you who didn’t go the short version of my comment is that the strategy to get major slashes to Social Security and […]

Here I  analyze the data set used by Reinhart and Rogoff (R-R) and by Herndon Ash and Pollin (HAP) in their critique and in particular the stata data set RR-processed.dta with data on public debt to GDP ratios and real GDP growth in 20 developed countries since 1946. I show evidence that low growth causes […]

The week began with the New York Post reporting “a scoop,” and then putting a track coach and a high school kid on the front page as “suspects.” You would think it couldn’t get worse for NewsCorp.  I would think it couldn’t get worse for NewsCorp, especially after CNN went out of their way to […]

Or: Thinking About Periods and Lags No need to rehash this cock-up, except to point to the utterly definitive takedown by Arindrajit Dube over at Next New Deal (hat tip: Krugman), and to point out that the takedown might just take even if you’re looking at R&R’s original, skewed data. But a larger point: I frequently see econometrics like R&R’s, comparing […]

Reader Matthew McOsker sends a note pointing us to 2004 and reading for context: Who are the Boston Marathon terrorists? Some early reports state the men are Chechen. So where does Chechnya fit into global terrorism? I found the following piece that gives a nice summary: ” On September 1, 2004, a group of Chechen […]

This story has rapidly made the rounds in the blogosphere, and it is indeed a big deal. One of the most significant economics papers underlying the argument for why high government debt (especially over 90% of gross domestic product) is bad for growth was published in 2010 by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “Growth in […]

Most of the formatting in my posts–blockquotes, paragraph spacing, italics–did not transfer to the new platform, so my old posts are pretty much a mishmash to read.  At least those posted since about early December, when I began drafting and posting using my then-new Chromebook, which uses only Google’s word processor, not MS Word.  I’m […]