Credit Card debt bubbles through the financial world. “Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa,” said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. “We’re starting to see leaks now.”The value of credit card accounts […]
Deroy Murdock of the National Review gets something right! On spending, LBJ’s Great Society seems greater than ever. Washington Republicans’ Spend-O-Rama famously included 13,997 pork-barrel projects that lodged like baby-back ribs in last year’s appropriations bills. President Bush’s $92.2 billion request for Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina funding has expanded to $109 billion after Senate […]
In their coverage of that $70 billion addition to the Federal debt, the Washington Post adds: House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that holding the line on spending while allowing the low tax rates to spur the economy will close the gap. But the spending problem lies not so much with the federal […]
Reading the news this morning I feel like we’re reliving the Carter years. The drop in consumer sentiment reported today by the University of Michigan, as well as Bush’s dismal approval ratings, both seem like echoes from the late 1970s. From Marketwatch: Consumer sentiment plunges to 7-month low WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – U.S. consumers’ attitudes about […]
Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds want you to believe this: I HADN’T HEARD THIS: Bush’s tax cuts make the tax system more progressive, according to a new study from the Joint Economic Committee. Of course, what’s really interesting is how little tax revenue comes from people in lower brackets. They point to this link, which […]
Greg Kaza is elated that the politicians will start (ab)using dynamic scoring: Dynamic scoring, however, attempts to measure the feedback-effects ignored in these models – those feedback-effects potentially becoming excellent ammunition for supply-side policymakers and tax-cut advocates. There’s no doubt that dynamic scoring is today being taken seriously within the budgeting community … More importantly, […]
Sheldon Alberts reports: In a memoir published Tuesday, the 37-year-old lesbian describes a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as a “gross affront” to gay Americans and reveals she almost quit the Republican campaign after President George W. Bush’s endorsement of the legislation two years ago. But Cheney saves her harshest words for Bush’s 2004 […]
Welcome back Kash and thanks for this post! I trust you saw those Cato Unbound discussions – and it seems David Frum is still as confused as ever: If we must have tax increases, the VAT would not be one of my choices, for the reason Summers predicts – I fear it will generate so […]
The FOMC (the interest rate-setting committee at the Fed) raised the Federal Funds rate to 5.0% today. Here’s the important bit of the accompanying statement: Economic growth has been quite strong so far this year. The Committee sees growth as likely to moderate to a more sustainable pace, partly reflecting a gradual cooling of the […]
Well, it looks like they finally did it. Congressional Republicans agreed yesterday on new ways to raise future taxes. They’ve proven quite expert at cutting today’s taxes and paying for them by issuing more government debt – debt that will have to be repaid in the future through higher taxes, of course – so this […]