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

Defending China’s Pegged Exchange Rate

William Kucewicz tries to argue over at NRO that “China’s dollar-pegged exchange rate has been one of the bright spots of the international monetary system of the past decade”. His primary argument seems to be that a fixed exchange rate system is both a necessary and sufficient condition for price stability. The evidence he presents […]

Social Security: Politics as Usual

Angry only begins to describe how this story makes me: WASHINGTON (AP) – The Labor Department cautioned organized labor in a letter made public Wednesday not to use money from pension funds to lobby against President Bush’s proposal to overhaul Social Security. “The department is very concerned about the potential use of plan assets to […]

Bad Times in Britain?

Calculated Risk highlights some bits of bad economic news that has come out about the British economy in recent days. Recent declines in retail spending and manufacturing production seem to have sparked a wave of economic gloom in the British media. Today CNN/Money adds fuel to the fire of pessimism about the British economy… and […]

On Prefunding Social Security

Sita Nataraj and John Shoven write: In order to ease the burden on workers during the retirement of the baby boom generation, the 1983 Social Security Reforms set payroll taxes above the level needed to pay current benefits, thus partially prefunding the baby boomers’ retirement. The military and civil service retirement programs followed suit in […]

Rich Lowry Redefines Wealthy

Are we Democrats being dishonest about the Bush-Pozen Social Security plan? The latest NRO column from Rich Lowry drew fire from Max Sawicky and Matthew Yglesias. Matthew points out how dishonest Lowry’s op-ed was. But this line is absolutely stupid: Shouldn’t a liberal welcome a proposal demanding sacrifice from the wealthy? Let me get this […]

The Fed’s Statement

To no one’s surprise, the Fed elected to raise interest rates by another 0.25% this afternoon. The real information that everyone was waiting for was some indication about whether the Fed seems more worried about the apparent recent slowdown of the US economy, or gradually increasing inflation measures. As it turns out, this afternoon’s statement […]

Higher and Higher…

The housing market boom is not quite over, it seems: Construction spending hits new record WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending jumped a surprisingly large 0.5 percent to a record high in March as home building also hit record levels, a government report showed Monday. Construction outlays in March climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual […]

NRO on Jane Fonda’s Apology

Regardless of how one felt about the Vietnam War – Jane Fonda’s decision to sit in the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunship was foolish and offensive. Ms. Fonda has said so herself. And yet, Dexter Lehtinen refuses to let go: You may have heard that Jane Fonda apologized to Vietnam veterans in her current book. That’s […]

Automobile Sector: Return of Voluntary Export Restrictions?

You may recall during Reagan’s first term when U.S. policymakers convinced the Japanese automobile manufacturers to limit their exports to the U.S. BBC reports we may seen round two of VERs: Toyota boss fears US trade fury Japan’s carmakers should consider giving their US rivals a breathing space to avoid the risk of a political […]