This was another mixed employment report.  The headline increase of 171,000 increase in payroll employment and 410,000 rise in employment reported in the household survey appeared strong.  But  other signs of weakness appeared within the report. The 184,000 increase in private payroll employment was the strongest since February. The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 […]

(Dan here… This one is still relevant.  I let it hang in drafts by mistake.) by Linda Beale Romney shows he’s a “know-it-all” who has no real ideas at all. I missed almost all of the first debate but watched most of this second one.  My quick sum-up of the action was the Obama was […]

Matthew Yglesias points the direction in his post: the Geographically smallest Electoral College map, which starts with the densest states and works down: If Democrats can bring Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida (or even two or three of them) firmly into the Democratic camp, the game is over for the foreseeable future. Those states […]

I’ve often commented on how childish, really adolescent, the views of libertarians are. But it’s rare that I see such a stunning example. In a recent NYT “Room for Debate,” Russell Sobel of The Citadel gives us this: Fixing disaster relief is simple: greater use of decentralized markets, and focusing government on its proper role. […]

Update: David Rosnick of CEPR questions this analysis. Update to come when I have Internet access again–which probably will be Saturday at the earliest. Brad DeLong got me thinking a few days ago, and not in a good way, when he quoted the brilliantly (and brilliantly-named) Cardiff Garcia: Thus far the surging mortgage origination business […]

It has been suggested that the rapid increase in the prices of fish, fowl, meat and eggs for about two years following October, 2009 was the result of QE causing inflation in these items.  From this Calculated Risk graph, we can get the QE date line.  QE was announced on Nov 25, 2008, and expanded […]

by David Zetland    David Zetland is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and maintains a blog on water issues at Aguanomics. It’s not as simple as selling books Many people ask me to comment on statements made by journalists covering the water sector. Most of the time, I am happy […]

by Linda Beale Romney’s CRUT Tax Shelter\ The Bloomberg press has looked further at Romney’s use of trusts and other arrangements to avoid taxes, using Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain more information than was released by Romney in his meager tax return release. Romney established a charitable trust in 1996 of a type […]

by Mike Kimel The Economic System of the Apostles I am not a Christian, but if I was, I suspect the following verses from the Acts of the Apostles would have an impact on my life. Acts of the Apostles, 2: 44-47 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions […]