by cactus Mankiw’s Incentives I know this has received comment here at Angry Bear a few weeks back (sorry – I’m in too much of a hurry to find the link right now) but a post by Greg Mankiw looking at his own incentive structure under the proposed Obama and McCain tax systems sticks in […]

Investment News suggested the following is being considered: House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all […]

Starting in September, my income, such as it were, is basically in C$. Stephen Gordon explains, with graphics, why that has been such a bad trade. The scariest part: The 2002-2008 expansion provided significant real income gains, and more than half of those gains were due to the improvement in Canada’s terms of trade. So […]

Via Dr. Black, we get CNN reporting: Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior economic policy adviser. “Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.” And why is it better? Because of […]

by rdan Who is Neel Kashkari? Neel Kashkari was designated as the Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability on October 6, 2008. In this capacity, Mr. Kashkari oversees the Office of Financial Stability including the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Mr. Kashkari also continues to hold the position of Assistant Secretary of the […]

by rdan An opinion at Salon caught my attention….here is part of the main point: As his campaign manager has described it, John McCain is now looking at a “narrow-victory scenario.” “The fact that we’re in the race at all,” added Steve Schmidt, “is a miracle. Because the environment is so bad and the head […]

by: Divorced one like Bush In a posting regarding which presidents would be considered socialist I found the following curious:1921 – 4% 73% Census1922 – 4% 56% Census1923 – 3% 56% Census1924 – 1.5% 46% Census1925-1928 – 1.5% 25% Census1929 – 0.375% 24% Census1930-1931 – 1.125% 25% Census 1982-1986 12 brackets 12% 50% IRS1987 5 […]

By Spencer I just posted this in the comments at Marginal Revolution to explain why the view that expanding bank lending demonstrates that their is no crises is incorrect. By looking at bank lending you are looking at the wrong side of the bank’s balance sheet. The point that bank lending is expanding is not […]

rdan A quick search on 401ks in response to reader Noni Mausa: Via Money Central: Financially stretched workers are increasingly breaking into their retirement accounts to get cash.Over the past couple of decades, the 401(k) account and its brethren have become the main retirement savings vehicles for millions of Americans. But as the credit crunch […]

You can’t make him think—or own to loan. Krugman notes: [L]ast week Joe Nocera of The Times pointed out a key weakness in the U.S. Treasury’s bank rescue plan: it contains no safeguards against the possibility that banks will simply sit on the money. “Unlike the British government, which is mandating lending requirements in return […]