Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Deficit Hawks Down: The Misconstrued “Facts” Behind Their Hype

Reposted from New Deal 2.0 with permission from author. Deficit Hawks Down: The Misconstrued “Facts” Behind Their Hype by James K. Galbraith Economist James K. Galbraith attends a Pete Peterson-funded road show. The Fiscal Solutions Tour is the latest Peter G. Peterson Foundation effort to rouse the public against deficits and the national debt — […]

David Streitfeld Knows Better than This

The NYT moves deeply into delusion: The rolling real estate crash that ravaged Florida and the Southwest is delivering a new wave of distress to communities once thought to be immune— economically diversified cities where the boom was relatively restrained. In the last year, home prices in Seattle had a bigger decline than in Las […]

New Program for Offshore Accounts

by Linda Beale New Program for Offshore Accountscrossposted with Ataxingmatter As I mentioned in earlier posts, the IRS has released information about a new voluntary disclosure program for offshore account holders.  The last program, which closed in October 2009, provided a low penalty of 20% of the highest aggregate balance in offshore accounts for the […]

Canadian economic growth is about two percentage points higher under Liberal governments

by Mike Kimel Canadian economic growth is about two percentage points higher under Liberal governmentsCross posted at the Presimetrics blog. Frances Woolley has a piece in Worthwhile Canadian Initiatives that begins like this: Canadian economic growth is about two percentage points higher under Liberal governments. At least, that’s what my colleagues Stephen Ferris and Marcel […]

The ECB would quash a discrete shift in German nominal GDP rather than accommodate it

David Beckworth points to Scott Sumner, who points to Kantoos on the effectiveness of nominal income targeting in Germany. Kantoos’ illustration certainly suggests that the ECB has been successful in getting the dynamics of output and prices (nominal GDP) right over the last decade. I have no contention with the historical evidence. Whether or not […]

Kash Mansori will be writing again for Angry Bear

Kash Mansori will be writing again for Angry Bear. He has his own site The Streetlight, which carries several new posts. When he entered the private sector in 2006 he stopped writing for blogs. Kash wrote well written and data driven posts on international finance and macro economic topics, and some humorous as well. Welcome […]

Health Care thoughts: Policy Confusion

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care: Policy Confusion The Obama administrative, and especially the Department of Health and Human Services, is pushing the notion of accountable care organizations (ACOs) and similar innovative integration strategies to improve the cost-benefit ratio of health care services. This is integral to PPACA (“Obamacare.”) ACOs and other integrated provider […]

Hot TIPS tips !

Many people are afraid that US inflation is about to accelerate. I think they are totally irrational, but the point is that they can be useful too. Most people in the USA don’t know about Treasury Inflation Protected Securities with payments indexed to the CPI. The inflation chicken littles would be delighted to invest in […]