From Lenny Dyksytra’s letter to friends about his bankruptcy filing yesterday: William McKinley filed for protection while serving as Ohio’s governor in 1893. He was in debt to the tune of $130,000 (an insurmountable sum in those days!) before some friends eventually helped to bail him out. Three years later, he occupied a desk in […]

by Bruce Webb In comments to his last post A Response to Megan McArdle, Again Cactus put the following up as a summary of the Economic Right’s approach to tax cuts:1. tax cuts mean people are encouraged to work harder 2. people work harder 3, growth Another version of this was posted, without apparent irony, […]

by divorced one like Bush Well, well, well, seems our Robert will have some more thinking to do. Via C & L to Radamisto who want’s to know if we have ADD or what comes the Bloomberg story that the money from money machine is being restarted. Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized […]

by cactus Megan McArdle responds to a post I wrote: So Obama doesn’t count because he’s not really a Democrat. But Bill Clinton was. But Richard Nixon–the chap who implemented price controls and massively expanded Social Security and Medicare–was definitely a Republican. Jimmy Carter, who deregulated like mad: definitely a Democrat. What are these policies […]

Curv3ball at The Poor Man warms the cockles of this Northeast Philadelphia native’s heart. Go Read the Whole Thing. Gary Becker must be rolling over in his grave.

Robert Waldmann The absolutely brilliant and almost reliably reasonable Kevin Drum quotes the very smart and usually reasonable Dan Drezner and writes In a speech today in Russia, Barack Obama said that “the pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game.” Dan Drezner isn’t so sure: If he had said, “The pursuit of prosperity […]

Robert Waldmann I almost feel I might disagree with Paul Krugman about international economics with imperfect competition. In particular Krugman confidently asserts that the wild swings in the the price of petroleum are the result of simple supply and demand curves (which are both extremely price inelastic so almost vertical) and not of speculation. He […]

by cactus Megan McArdle Has a Question Megan McArdle has a question: What happens to the cottage industry among Democratic-leaning armchair economists grinding out analyses proving that Democratic presidents are, like, totally awesome for the economy? Presuming that we’re stuck–as seem very likely–in at least a couple of years of really grinding low-to-no growth, Obama […]

Andrew Samwick states the obvious, clearly and well: I think we are now 18 months behind where we should be in moving forward with sensible government spending plans. We should have pulled the fiscal policy ripcord in January 2008 with a public investment plan designed to repair our aging infrastructure. I’d rather have the 18 […]

Credit crunch, followed by asset deflation. See also Robert’s series of essays in December/January.