by Steve Roth Don’t Like “Money Printing”? Then Stop Borrowing. Whip Inflation Now!Cross-posted at Asymptosis. There’s a widespread conception that “money printing” by the government causes inflation, and that “money printing” = government deficit spending. But people don’t realize that:

Paul Krugman To be fair, applying maximizing thinking has achieved some major successes even in macroeconomics. The permanent income/life cycle style of consumption theory does a much better job of accounting for the stylized facts about spending than the old, mechanical consumption function. The natural rate hypothesis, with its crucial implication that high inflation would […]

by Mike Kimel John Taylor in Favor of Higher Marginal Income Tax Rates? If Not, Why Not? A couple of weeks ago, John Taylor posted a graph showing that since 1990, there has been a negative correlation between the Investment to GDP ratio and unemployment. There’s been some back and forth between Taylor and some […]

Guest post by Michael Halasy Latest from Cato… Kaiser Health News carries an article from Michael Cannon from Cato Institute on the benefits of Ryan’s proposal on Medicare. Cannon is wrong. First, he begins by advocating for repeal by comparing the roughly 500 billion in cost of the program to the overall debt and deficit, […]

{Crossposted from dKos Social Security Defenders Group} Social Security has been off the radar this week for obvious reasons, progressives being more focused on efforts of Republicans to win the War on Women via the Continuing Resolution. Plus while Paul Ryan’s original Roadmap proposed privatization of Social Security his Budget proposal for next year left […]

Update: Nouriel Roubini front pages this post on Euromonitor here. The ECB dove in and hiked its policy rate by 25 basis points to 1.25%. I had the pleasure of listening to Wolfgang Munchau on Thursday, and he reiterated what I reluctantly understood: the ECB’s strict inflation target is ridiculously simple for such a complex […]

AP’s Andrew Taylor describes a part of the federal budget debate that needs clarification for the average voter and others regarding this current round of ‘negotiations’: Some $18 billion of the spending cuts involve cuts to so-called mandatory programs whose budgets run largely on autopilot. To the dismay of budget purists, these cuts often involve […]

The Tax Policy Center The Supreme Court Says Tax Expenditures aren’t Goverbment Spending points us to a notable decision by the Supreme Court that has been lost in the federal budget fracas. Ever since Stanley Surrey popularized the concept of tax expenditures nearly half a century back, economists have argued that many tax breaks are […]

Today RJs Aggregator presents opinion across the web regarding proposed Republican budget cuts for fiscal year 2012. Of note, AB authors Ken Houghton and Kash also contributed to the debate. Guest Post: The RJs Aggregator – The Ryan Plan by RJ House Republicans Propose $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Decade – “House Republicans plan this […]

by Michael Halasy Health Policy Analyst and Emergency Medicine PA Regional Disparities in Health Spending… Jason Shafrin, over at the Healthcare Economist, brings up an interesting paper examining the data from the Dartmouth Atlas. For those that are unfamiliar, the Dartmouth Atlas is a compendium of data examining Medicare spending per beneficiary, and then comparing […]