The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

by Linda Beale Derivatives: greater transparency is neededcrossposted with Ataxingmatter The big banks got into considerable trouble doing derivatives trades–especially the credit default swaps where AIG was the major counterparty and the taxpayers ended up bailing out the Big Banks like Goldman Sachs. So surely one of the results of “financial reform” in the wake […]

MSNBC reports Obama signs tax cut bill into law : The Senate vote was 65-31. The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-175, on Wednesday. Link to S4023 as passed by the Senate today. Obama was expected to sign it next week, although the change wouldn’t take immediate effect. The legislation says […]

Chinese Confusions by Paul Krugman These days, China seems to play the same role in much of our discourse that Japan did two decades ago. We look at our own follies — which are immense — and then look at the Chinese, and ascribe to them all the virtues of foresight and determination we lack. […]

by Tom aka Rusty Health Care: Hysterical Reporting Fox News ran a screaming intro and a scary bottom summary line on a story on some survey of physicians, claiming a majority of physician will quit, retire or work part-time. Link via Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/video/health-15749655/23362511 This is further proof that Fox News does not do journalism. The […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Opportunities in Detroit? Detroit has lost about 60% of its population since the 1950s peak of about 2 million. About 50 square miles of Detroit is so thinly populated that the Mayor wants to pay for people to move to more densely populated neighborhoods so the area can be abandoned […]

Update: Brad DeLong looks at the data and suggests that the problem may be that the current President is as innumerate as the previous one. Mark Thoma quotes James Kwak: So no, I don’t think Obama is abandoning his principles for political advantage; I think these are his principles. And while I’m upset at him, […]

I have no idea what the advanced Google reader filter actually does. Yves has fun with it as do readers in comments. Here is ours.

Baseline Scenario links to Simon Johnson’s thoughts on current practice of politics. Well worth the time to read and comment. Delusions Of Fiscal Grandeur by Simon Johnson If you honestly believe that investors will happily buy up any amount of US government debt (at low interest rates) for the indefinite future, then relax.  The tax […]