Madison Wisconsin anti Scott Walker sign of the day via www.first-draft.com

When is an event ? Yesterday Janet Yellen said Event studies can therefore be helpful in gauging the financial market effects of such communications. [skip] Last August, the FOMC announced that it would begin reinvesting principal payments on agency MBS and agency debt into longer-term Treasury securities, and over the subsequent couple of months or […]

Do my eyes deceive me ? Is this the Washington Post ? Is Ezra Klein writing under the double pseudonym “Neil Irwin and Michael A. Fletcher” ? Irwin and Fletcher warn of two threats to the US economy — high oil prices and tea partiers (call it the Texas tea party menace). U.S. economic recovery […]

Today the German Federal Statistics Office reported that the February Consumer Price Index is expected to mark a 2.0% (2.047% by my calculations, which is very close to a rounded 2.1%) annual pace in February 2011. This is simply a ‘flash’ print, and the Statistics Office was very careful to discount the fact that inflation […]

House spending cuts hurt U.S growth -Goldman Sachs By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON | Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:50pm EST [fair use skip] “Under the House passed spending bill, the drag on GDP growth from federal fiscal policy would increase by 1.5pp (percentage points) to 2pp in Q2 and Q3 compared with current law,” according to […]

Both Gary and Rebecca cited Marc Lynch recommending “intervening” in Libya: The appropriate comparison is Bosnia or Kosovo, or even Rwanda where a massacre is unfolding on live television and the world is challenged to act. It is time for the United States, NATO, the United Nations and the Arab League to act forcefully to […]

by Beverly Mann Washington Post writer R. Jeffrey Smith posted a comment to my post yesterday, providing a link to an article by him published in the paper about a letter that a large ad hoc group of law professors sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees yesterday recommending legislation that would extend to […]

With the recent surge in oil prices I thought it would be useful to look at the potential impact with one set of data I watch. It is energy as a share of personal consumption expenditures or consumer spending. In the 1970s energy consumption rose from about 6% to 9% of spending, or about 50%. […]

An opinion piece in the NYT points us to new docs on former President Eisenhower: LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.” More can be found here. On Oct. 31, […]