I’m going to try to make this post brief and comprehensible.  It contains no information not in an earlier post but I delete a whole lot of distracting data. The question is does the Reinhart Rogoff (hence R-R) data set on public debt and real GDP in 20 rich countries post WWII contain evidence that a […]

Or to be more precise, all currency is consensus currency. Units of exchange (dollar bills, great big rocks at the bottom of the ocean) can have value merely because everyone in a community agrees that they have value. That value need not be declared, defined, or enforced by by some “fiat” authority with powers of (ultimately […]

I have long advocated that the United States should follow Germany’s example of aggressive pursuit of tax evasion, in particular its practice of paying informants for account information from secrecy destinations like Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The German Parliament’s upper house (Bundesrat) rejected a deal in November that Prime Minister Angela Merkel was willing to sign […]

I had my hair cut last week.  It’s a big event as it happens about twice per year.  While there I always get into political conversations with the lady cutting my hair.  This time, as often it was the economy.  Her position still is that the individual citizens collecting welfare are effecting her income.  We’ve […]

When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night, the celebration was instantly overtaken by an ideologically charged debate. Liberals argued that the government must respect Tsarnaev’s constitutional rights, by which they meant that he should be treated the same as any ordinary criminal suspect—informed of his Miranda rights, supplied with a lawyer, presented to court as […]

Here is a bit more analysis of 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.  This post is […]

I see some evidence that higher domestic energy production and improved competitiveness of US manufacturing is having a positive impact on the US trade balance and US industrial production. But I still expects the impact to be limited. In particular, the real non-petroleum trade balance continues to deteriorate. Increased supplies of cheap natural gas helps […]

Looking for some back articles and wanting to try out posting with our new setup I found this one by Mike Kimel (formally known as Cactus) from July, 2010.   It is always fun to look back.* He presents his data and argument regarding where we’re going and concludes: This time, I’m not as comfortable; given where and how […]

The two immediate what-everyone’s-talking-about legal issues in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev case concern his Miranda rights–that is, at what point must he be read his Miranda rights notifying him that he has the right to remain silent and to the counsel of an attorney–and whether he can, and if so should, be classified as an enemy […]