Tim Duy takes a gracious lead pipe to silly analysis: It really makes one understand why the public often dismisses academics as out of touch in their ivory towers. One has to imagine that neither Mulligan nor Mankiw ever held a real summer job. Nor, apparently, have they looked at any other nonseasonally adjusted data. […]

by Mike Kimel The Non-Relationship Between Interest Rates and the Money Supply, Part 2Cross-posted at the Presimetrics Blog. This post is a bit less about Presidents than usual, but its a follow-up to last week’s post on the non-relationship between the money supply and interest rates. (That post appeared both at the Presimetrics and Angry […]

Marshall Auerback is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator.crossposted with New Deal 2.0 Welcome to the World of the “New Normal”, UK Style Calling high unemployment the “new normal” is a lazy way to cover up poor fiscal policy. We are now starting to see the economic impact […]

H.R.6010 To prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes proposed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich and only five others. The bill seems reasonable…does the executive branch, and more probably intelligence branch of the executive branch, have the explicit permission to assassinate US citizens on its own authority, without review of Congress? […]

Robert Reich lays out some figures for the military jobs programs both in manpower and hardware: America’s biggest — and only major — jobs program is the U.S. military. Over 1,400,000 Americans are now on active duty; another 833,000 are in the reserves, many full time. Another 1,600,000 Americans work in companies that supply the […]

New York Times David Leonhardt argues that real wages are rising, so those resilient workers that remain employed will benefit from the bounce-back in “effective pay”. The problem with this insight is twofold: first, the expansion phase of real hourly compensation, a broader measure of total earnings, is falling; and second, sitting atop a mountain […]

The real trade deficit collapsed in June — plunging from -$45,992 million to -$54,136 billion ( 2005 $). I have not done the calculation, but this will generate a significant downward revision of the second quarter real GDP report. Remember, BEA does not have this data when they do the first GDP report. The plunge […]

by reader Ilsm “No, Again, To F-35 Alt-Engine: Schwartz”, John Reed, DefenseNews.com August 4, 2010 The U.S. Air Force’s top general reaffirmed his opposition to the GE-Rolls Royce’s alternative engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter this week, saying that spending billions on the backup engine does not make sense in today’s fiscal […]

by Beverly Manncross posted with The Annarborist Ross Douthat To the Rescue If you can’t base a gay-marriage ban in tradition or in a religious objection—because laws have to have a secular purpose—and you also can’t ground it in the claim that children raised by same-sex couples are worse off, because the research shows just […]

Robert Waldmann Kevin Drum writes“The GOP leadership has released “Tread Boldly,” a guidebook for Republican members of congress during the summer recess, and it includes a whole section called “Spending Restraint Solutions for Discussion.” Finally, we’ll get some details! So here they are: ‘Canceling unspent “stimulus” funds, saving up to $266 billion …’ Being hep […]