by Rebecca Wilder Today I digress from my recent Eurozone obsessions to compare the U.S. Consumer Confidence report (released today) to the PMI production surveys, a “soft” comparison of supply and demand. According to the Conference Board today: The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which had decreased in February, rebounded in March. The Index now […]
lifted from Bruce’s e-mail Hi Bruce, I really enjoyed your recent post to OpenLeft about the war on Social Security. I wrote a related piece deconstructing Obama’s latest picks to the Debt Commission: Alternet: Obama Packs Debt Commission with Social Security Looters? Any feedback about the article or thoughts on the matter would be greatly […]
I was asked by Periódico Diagonal to answer a few questions related to the Eurozone, based on several articles that I wrote (here, here, and here). I don’t know if these will be published, but “enquiring minds want to know”. Here we go: 1. In a recent article you announced that the next cycle of […]
by Linda Beale Banks, repos and transparency in accounting A repo transaction is essentially a collateralized financing. For tax purposes, everybody knows that it will be treated as a loan, no matter that it is called a “sale” with an agreement for a repurchase later. For accounting purposes, though, some repo transactions have been able […]
by cactus Last week I wrote A Simple Explanation of How The Use of Derivatives Created The Great Recession. I want to clarify things with an analogy that at first glance may seem unrelated. Let’s talk about poker. Its a game that seems to have grown in popularity in the last decade, especially with the […]
reads Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias (between the two of them they have more years than I do). Klein thinks the FDIC works well. Yglesias notes that it keeps eating banks every Friday and has doubts about the quality of its prudential regulation. I will argue that the FDIC has more of an incentive to […]
Robert Waldmann told Paul Krugman so About 21 months ago Paul Krugman had a question lower and middle-income Americans would be substantially better off under the Obama plan. But where is the money for health care reform? I proposed an answer there are two puzzles in Obama’s proposals1) How does he plan to pay for […]
by Rebecca Wilder This is a post about my confusion, rather than my reporting, of the Eurozone saga. Here are some pieces worth reading if you want to catch up: The NY Times (the basics); Ed Harrison (via Naked Capitalism); From the billy blog; The Financial Times (Martin Wolf, a must read); The Economist (will […]
by Bruce Webb Well some things are coming clear about the Presidents Deficit Commission. One its Chairmen have made it clear that its business starts and stops with Entitlements, the concerns some Republicans had that this would be Obama’s way of boosting taxes on the General Fund side or slashing military spending have been shown […]