Secretary Snow testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary on Wednesday: The economic indicators since the President signed the Jobs and Growth Act in May 2003 provide validity to this notion. Since that time, we have seen eleven straight months of positive business investment; nearly five […]

Josh Bivens says what I wish I had said!

Jim Hamilton covers a recent paper by Fed economist Jonathan Wright addressing exactly the question that I posed the other day: were interest rates more or less contractionary two months ago, when the yield curve was flat or slightly inverted but at lower interest rates, or today, when the yield curve is no longer inverted […]

As PGL notes, there was good news on the employment front this morning. The US economy continues to enjoy a respectable, though not spectacular, rate of job growth. Here’s the picture: For the past several months now the economy has generated more than the 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs needed each month to simply keep […]

The big news is covered by Kevin Drum, Max Sawicky, Mark Thoma, and many others almost too numerous to name. OK, the left side of BlogLand is all over this – but what about the National Review. It seems Andy McCarthy wants to “parse carefully how the press is describing Libby’s testimony”. Check out the […]

Lawrence Kudlow makes a good case that we should not close the borders. He hopes – as do I – that Mexico can foster its own economic development. After all, the CIA’s World Factbook reports Mexico’s per capita GDP at only $10,000. But he loses me with the following: When Fox took Mexico’s helm six […]

I’d like to get back to a problem that I was writing about last week: the possibility of using a value-added tax (VAT) to fix the “on-budget” federal budget deficit. That deficit, which excludes the Social Security trust fund (which will run a modest but declining surplus), is likely to be in the neighborhood of […]

Mickey Kaus thinks so: Earned Income Tax Credit does send cash to low income earners, but again you need to earn at least some money to get it. And it’s already pretty big. We probably can’t increase it much higher without running into cost and disincentive problems when the credit is phased out in the […]

Anthony Zinni co-authored Battle Ready with Tom Clancy and served in the Marines from the 1960’s to 2000. From 1997 to 2000, General Zinni was Commander in Chief of CENTCOM. Zinni is also a conservative Republican. Given his expertise, one would have thought President Bush would have heeded Zinni’s counsel not to invade Iraq. Zinni […]

The Census Bureau reported a sharp rise in U.S. construction spending in February led by private residential construction spending. Private residential spending increased to a record $665.7 Billion in February (SA, annual rate), 1.3% above the revised January estimate. The first graph shows private U.S. construction spending for single family homes since 1993. All numbers […]