Robert Waldmann is commenting on a comment at Mark Thoma’s blog. The comment NotMarkT ha detto… One of the difficulties with model selection for assessing tail probabilities is that the empirical data often can’t distinguish among light (e.g., normal) or heavy tailed (e.g., pareto) distributions. The model selection problem then becomes a question of optimism […]

The Financial Times points us to the G-20 communique abandoning stimulus because “they recognize financial market concerns”: Finance ministers from the world’s leading economies ripped up their support for fiscal stimulus on Saturday, recognising that financial market concerns over sovereign debt had forced a much greater focus on deficit reduction. The meeting of the Group […]

Lifted from Econospeak, PGL speaks out: Do All 222 of These Economists Think the Multiplier for Changes in Government Spending is Negative? John Boehner uses Twitter to claim that economists think reductions in government spending will lead to an economic recovery. He has cited this letter signed by 222 economists as the basis for his […]

Coast Guard Told Public Not to ‘Fixate’ On Rate of Spill While Sitting On Video videos show more clearly than ever how BP, with little resistance from the Coast Guard or other federal agencies, kept the public in the dark about just how bad things were beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. With […]

by Bruce Webb High on the list of tasks mandated of the Obama Deficit Commission is to get the deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2015. Unfortunately for them they have set up a situation where they can’t move that number via cuts to Social Security, if anything such cuts more one of their […]

The employment report was basically more of the same and was very discouraging.Even though the headline number reported a large 431,00 increase in employment, most of this was temporary Census jobs. Private employment only increased 41,000, significantly less than in the previous few months. The unemployment rate fell, but that was just as much a […]

by Mike Kimel Help!!!! The publisher has put together some Advance Reading Copies of Presimetrics. They’re bound-up versions of the book usually sent out to media for an advance read on the book. Obviously, they’d like my co-author and I to get them into the hands of the most influential people possible for them to […]

Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Federal Government Stupidity – Part 2Part 2 of an occasional series When Verizon wanted to merge with Alltel the feds allowed the merger but created a bizarre and weird system that disallowed most Verizon stores from servicing Verizon customers. How this increases competition eludes me. So my son is traveling and […]

by Beverly Manncrossposted with The Annarborist The BP Oil Leak and Tea-Party/Business-Republican Politics “The only good news from the oil spill is that when catastrophe strikes, even some hard-line conservatives, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, start begging for the federal government to act, and act big. It’s the crunch moment for government to make […]