The headline number of a 163,000 increase in payroll employment –172,000 private and a -9,000  fall in government –appeared strong.  But it was really just another .weak employment report.  For example over the last twelve months private payroll employment gains have average some 163,000 so this months 172,000 increase was just barely above the 12 […]

by Dale CoberlySocial SecurityThe Fundamental TruthIf you don’t understand this, you don’t understand Social Security. If you do understand it, all the rest is minor technical detail… or utter nonsense. Social Security is not welfare. Social Security is not an investment plan. Social Security is insurance… to avoid welfare if your investment plan doesn’t work […]

by Linda Beale Corporations Don’t Need More Tax Breaks If you listen to the corporate lobbyists, and the right-wingers who plead their cases for them in Congress and in the media, you’d think that corporations are so heavily taxed that it is threatening their ability to continue to conduct business and be competitive in world […]

Romney released a new middle class economic plan [today].  [The] plan is called: “Mitt Romney’s new plan for a stronger middle class.” It contains ideas we’ve heard before: more access to domestic energy resources; cutting taxes and capping spending; repealing Obamacare. Mark Hopkins at Moody’s Analytics tells me that it is mostly a set of […]

by Kenneth  Thomas It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! (Review) When I saw that James Carville and Stan Greenberg had just published It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! (Blue Rider Press), I knew that I would want to read it. I had always liked Carville’s We’re Right, They’re Wrong and wanted to know his take on approaching […]

Evidence of Hampered Monetary Policy Transmission Channel in the Euro Area by Rebecca Wilder Mario Draghi cautioned on the ‘hampered’ transmission channel of monetary policy in his now famous London speech last week: To the extent that the size of these sovereign premia hampers the functioning of the monetary policy transmission channel, they come within […]

Yesterday I compared real private GDP in cycles. Today I would like to look at  real business fixed investment. If you listened to CNBC — otherwise known as the Republican Propaganda Channel — or the campaign claims you would think that all the uncertainty created by Obama was destroying business confidence and that real business […]

Mitt Romney proposes reducing tax brackets by 20% and cutting the estate tax (to zero IIRC). He will keep or expand favored treatment of capital gains and dividends. He claims that he doesn’t plan to cut taxes for the rich. He claims that he will avoid such cuts by eliminating deductions, credits and exclusions. One […]

by Linda Beale Does the Tea Party support Tax Dodgers? Andrew Leonard’s July 27 article in Salon, Tea Party Shields Tax Dodgers, looks at the way Jim DeMint and Rand Paul are carrying water for the big banks–suggesting that Treasury shouldn’t be implementing the “FATCA” legislation passed as part of the HIRE act because it […]

Romney’s plan calls for linking the Pentagon’s base budget to Gross Domestic Product, and allowing the military to spend at least $4 dollars out of every $100 the American economy produces.” — Defense spending to spike $2.1 trillion under Romney, CNN Money, May 10, 2012.) In a post here two weeks ago I noted that […]