This post was provoked by a moment of frustrated pique, another in a series of ‘shakes cane at clouds’ moments as this classic New Deal Liberal is driven to craziness by otherwise sensible social liberals who still fetishize markets. And yes I am pointing fingers right at Erza K, Matt Y and Kevin D. But […]

President Clinton introduces the panelists, noting that there is a UN discussion of Libya scheduled for 10:00 a.m. and that they will have to leave quickly.  First up is Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, about whom President Clinton is enthusiastic. Calderon is less vibrant, but presents an impressive array of detail on Mexico’s unilateral reduction […]

[updates and edits, especially in the 4th-6th grafs] “The winner” in Haitian development created 12,000 jobs in the garment industry in the past eight years in Haiti.  Seems as if all of the participants today will be garment manufacturers, though WJC notes that companies such as Coca-Cola and Newmont Mining are also considering investment. When […]

As with last year and the year before, I will be (as much as possible) at the Clinton Global Initiative, now with even more Social Media and Networking Goodness. If you’re here, say hello. If you’re not, look for posts and peruse the offerings for the conference. If there’s something you’re especially interested in, email […]

(cross-posted from Skippy)

I was going to write something about Reed Hastings’s inane email, but Wired covered the main point, even if they did bury the lede: However, it’s impossible to see how the split itself benefits customers. The price and plan changes that flustered many of them months ago remain in place, but the company now directs […]

Recently there has been some discussion of housing in the economy that looked at housing starts versus the long term trend of housing starts and concluded that starts have been so far below trend over the last few years that it should offset the excess housing built before the recession.If the excess housing stock has […]

(Still cross posted from dKos. But since coberly and I have an extended colloquy there maybe not a bad place to start)Part 1 was kind of a set-up in both senses of the word in that it didn’t really deliver on the post title. But I think a necessary set-up and so lets resume. When […]

by Mike Kimel [UPDATE: Graphic title corrected below. h/t Eric Whitaker] This post is the seventh in a series that looks at the relationship between real economic growth and the top individual marginal tax rate. The first looked at the period from 1901 to 1928, the second from 1929 to 1940, the third from 1940 […]

(cross posted from Daily Kos Social Security Defenders Group)There are three prevalent myths about the assets in Social Security Trust Funds, plural because there are two of them OAS-Old/Age Survivors and DI-Disability Insurance. The first myth, which comes mostly from the Right, is that those assets are just ‘Phony IOUs’. The second myth comes mostly […]