Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

More Supply-side Spin from Kevin Hassett

Mark Thoma reads Kevin Hassett so we don’t have to. Mark notes: I disagree with his demonstration that tax cuts paid for themselves and that therefore the deficit is attributable solely to spending, not to tax cuts. Let’s take a look at what Hassett wrote: Let’s tune out the chatter for a minute and just […]

More on Inflation and Housing Costs

Irwin Kellner of Marketwatch picks up on the question that I posed last week of how inflation in house prices affects official inflation data. He takes the reasoning that I suggested — that when house prices and rents diverge, the CPI may not give as good a picture of the cost-of-living as we would like […]

PlameGate: Blaming Valerie

Even as David Corn mocks Cliff May, Mark Levin blames Valerie Plame. Rather than blaming the victim, Andrew McCarthy blames her employer. Since Levin and McCarthy were likely paid by the National Review for their stupidity, let’s blame their employer for such pathetic nonsense.

Cliff May: What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?

I guess Mr. May is the class clown over at the National Review. You may recall that his first excuse for the 7/14/2003 column by Robert Novak was the premise that it was common knowledge that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. But now Mr. May claims we could not have known that she was […]

Job Growth & Housing Price Increases

Martin Wolk attributes the following alleged correlation to Ben Bernanke: For example, states exhibiting higher rates of job growth also tend to have experienced greater appreciation in house prices. The AP story on Bernanke’s comments can be found here. Wolk argues that job growth alone cannot explain housing appreciation adding that other fundamental factors may […]

Renminbi News

From the Financial Times: US expects Chinese currency revaluation The Bush administration has told key senators that it expects China to revalue its currency in August ahead of a planned visit to Washington by President Hu Jintao in September, according to people familiar with the matter. Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham, co-sponsors of a […]

Falling Inflation, Part II

The BLS released the June report of the Producer Price Index this morning. It confirms what yesterday’s CPI report suggested: inflation in the US seems to have peaked earlier this year (at least for the time being), and may in fact be falling. From the report: The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods showed no […]

PlameGate: The National Review Has No Principles at All

While I had promised not to say anything more, NRO’s oped sort of speaks for itself: What we know so far is far from damning. Then there are these tidbits from The Corner: KLo: Remember Sandy Burgular? I remain more concerned about the near-non-scandal of a former national-security adviser mishandling and destroying classified docs than […]

A Strange Argument for Repealing the Estate Tax

John Tamny argues that redistributing wealth is per se a reduction in savings: Furthermore, it’s not just morally wrong for the government to use the estate tax to redistribute wealth, it’s also bad economic policy. Wealth by definition is savings. When savings are confiscated for government use, entrepreneurial opportunities in need of capital go wanting […]