I try not to pay attention—and not provide a direct link—to the NYT’s Stupidest Conservative. It’s one of the greatest advantages of having Susan of Texas around: you can go there and see anything I might write, done better, and (in this case) with cute graphics. But when Brad DeLong falls down on the job—dealing […]

The IMF released its Q3 2010 Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) report. The COFER database provides the breakdown of official central bank portfolio holdings by currency across advanced and emerging/developing market economies. The picture is roughly half complete, as 44% of the global reserve positions go unallocated. But the trend in reported […]

Naked Capitalism points us to a letter to ‘sign’ today in support of the FDIC and Congressman Brad Miller’s advocacy for servicer regulation: This time, though, there is a way to stand up against the banks. And the reason is because in this case, Sheila Bair at the FDIC actually wants to do the right […]

by Mike Kimel The Tax Rate that Maximizes Economic Growth, Part 2… With Tax Burdens Too!Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog. This post continues my look at the relationship between taxes and growth (what I modestly called the “Kimel curve”), which I will continue expanding on over a series of posts. Today I want to […]

Health and Economic Development Primer in one easy lesson (via SocProf’s Twitter feed): This is not surprising to see the contrast between the prosperous (at least until now) areas, in green where chronic illnesses prevail but are diseases tied to aging, as opposed to the semi-periphery and periphery where infectious / parasitic diseases are prevalent […]

By Daniel Becker Just thought, being the new year, we might want to start it off with some actual new thinking about how to make our economic system better. I have been meaning to purchase the book: Were you born on the wrong Continent. I’m just a very slow reader though and have to finish […]

From Open Congress Nov 15, 2009 The Most Important Health Care Reform Provision You’ve Never Heard Of For months, Bruce Webb has been tracking a provision in the House’s health care bills that has flown mostly under the radar. He calls it the “most important and most overlooked” aspect of the bills, and he may […]

Spent the past few minutes reading Alea. jck notes that, over the past five years, the Pound has grown in importance at the expense of the yen and that the Euro has done the same against the dollar. If this goes against your memory, you’re not part of the IMF. Even better is when jck […]

by Bruce Webb There has been a recent mini-surge of op-eds claiming that the ‘assets’ of the Trust Funds, all $2.6 trillion, are simply mythical. The most recent Scrooge to argue this line may have been Thomas McClanahan of the KC Star in this piece from Christmas: More mythbusting on Social Security ‘money’” in which […]