by Bruce Webb These figures show graphically what the recession has done to Social Security’s medium term outlook. Answer? Not much.. A near term dip in income is never fully recovered in dollar terms. A DI ‘Primary Surplus’ heading for zero got there a little faster. Does any of this add up to rushing to […]

rdan Texas Observer carries commentary that is revealing. Editor’s note: These remarks were delivered to a meeting of the Texas Lyceum in Austin on April 3, at a debate between University of Texas professor James Galbraith, an Observer contributing writer, and former Majority Leader Richard Armey, chief instigator of the recent Astroturf “tea party” protests. […]

By divorced one like Bush The following from Robert’s post got me thinking about railroads. “There have been three big banking booms in modern U.S. history. The first began in the late nineteenth century, during the Second Industrial Revolution, when bankers like J. P. Morgan funded the creation of industrial giants like U.S. Steel and […]

Robert Waldmann James Surowiecki has an interesting article on this topic in the May 11 New Yorker. He reaches rather precise conclusions including “The desire to bring back the boring, small banking industry of the nineteen-fifties is understandable. Unfortunately, the only way to do that would be to bring back the economy of the fifties, […]

by cactus The Greenspan Fed, the 2000 Election, and the 2001 Recession In the past, I’ve had a few posts on the Greenspan era Fed. I’ve noted that some of its behavior seemed somewhat, er, biased, almost as if it the money supply was contracted a bit too much around election time when Democrats held […]

by David Zetland, post from Aguanomics Right to Water01 May 2009 I frequently say that was should be allocated on a “some for free, pay for more basis.” I borrowed this idea from South Africa, where water as a human right has been written into the constitution. Here’s an update [in french] on the right […]

rdan PEW Research Center has a small (724) sample of opinions among US citizens on the use of torture to gain important information. I believe it is too small to generate reliable data on differences among cohorts, class, and religiosity, but can be useful for discussions if the split is about 50/50.

rdan Changing fresh water patterns Some of the developing world’s largest rivers are drying up because of climate change, threatening water supplies in some of the most populous places on Earth, say scientists. Researchers from the US-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) analysed data combined with computer models to assess flow in 925 rivers […]

by Linda Beale, A cross-post from ataxingmatter Misunderstandings about Tax Today I was skimming the Washington Post, a newspaper that I don’t read as regularly as the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, but find especially useful in providing insight into both Beltway thinking and beyond-the-Beltway thinking. I read a random mix of […]

rdan Bear vs. Bulls at Skeptical Capitalist. Good for a smile during the pain.