by Bruce Webb Back in 2000 Alan Greenspan warned Congress about the potential disappearance of the long bond in the face of continuing surpluses. He probably knew at the time that he was just feeding the appetites of tax-cutters, and not say advocating for using those surpluses for something like Universal Single Payer, but he […]

I want one of these positions: The Office of Complex Financial Institutions (which the agency has assigned the acronym CFI) “will perform continuous review and oversight of bank holding companies with more than $100 billion in assets as well as non-bank financial companies designated as systemically important by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council,” the […]

Rdan here…Rebecca just emerged from the bottom of the Grand Canyon on her way to a massage somewhere in the Southwest. Hence for some reason she is not publishing much at the moment.:) This one is late to AB, but still intersting. by Rebecca WilderConsumer confidence: that extremely coincident, but often cited as leading consumer […]

We keep hearing about the Texas Miracle.  It’s been mythic since “openly gay” Governor Rick Perry declared that Texas was in great shape, in no need of stimulus monies at all—after receiving enough to turn his state’s fourteen-figure budget deficit into a surplus. (UPDATE: Links added. And that final link was rather prophetic.) So when […]

Hat tip Calculated Risk: •From the BEA:Personal Income for Metropolitan Areas, 2009 Personal income declined in 2009 in most of the nation’s metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.The per capita income in my MSA fell 3.8% last year.

by reader Ilsm It is now Empire Security“Defense Plan For The 21st Century”, Washington Post 1 August ’10, Pg. 19By Stephen J. Hadley and William J. Perry This article is another salvo in the military industrial complex war on the taxpayer to keep the pentagon rolling in money at the expense of the needs of […]

Contact us by e-mail: For a problem about the site, email Dan Crawford or Ken Houghton. Ordered alphabetically: Dan Crawford (Rdan) Linda Beale Dan Becker Tom Ealy Spencer England Mike Halasy Ken Houghton Jazzbumpa Mike Kimel Steve Roth Robert Waldmann Bruce Webb Rebecca Wilder For all advertising inquiries, please visit our Advertising page.

Robert Waldmann David Altig has convinced the Wall Street Journal that hiring in the USA is low given the vacancy rate. The basic fact is “Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires,” I remain totally unconvinced. I’m not convinced by […]

We’re used to that line by now. Ross Perot—one of the more prominent people who got rich due to government contracts—used it, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are using it (while desperately hoping you don’t pay attention to how they ran Lucent/HP or eBay), and Aaron Sorkin even had Charles Grodin say it in Dave, […]