Our friend Mark Thoma alerted me to the latest from Tom DeLay: Democrats have no ideas and no class, DeLay said last night. My initial reaction is in the spirit of Rubin’s op-ed – let’s reverse all that pork barrel spending passed for the friends of Tom. Now there is an idea with some class. […]
While Star War freaks like me await Revenge of the Sith, Mark Thoma and CalculatedRisk read the latest from Robert Rubin. If the fiscal policy analogy to Revenge of the Sith was the election of Ronald Reagan, then Bill Clinton represents Luke Skywalker. Of course, the election of George W. Bush was the Evil Empire […]
During the spring of 2001, Marc Labonte and Gail Makinen of the Congressional Research Service wrote: In general, many economists would support the concept that lower taxes made possible through lower government spending would increase the long run sustainable rate of economic growth. There is an important distinction between this concept and a tax reduction […]
Mark Thoma has some fun with the latest from Lawrence Kudlow but left this line alone: The blowout jobs report for April, with 274,000 new business payrolls and an upward-revision of 93,000 for February and March, virtually assures that economic growth for the first half of 2005 will come in around 4 percent. The tax-cut […]
Maybe you recall the letter where 250 Economists Endorse President Bush’s Jobs and Growth Plan. Donald Luskin had promised to get over 450 economists to sign this rather meaningless claim that the Bush deficits were fiscally responsible and were good for economic growth. Even adding his name to the list along with comedian Ben Stein’s, […]
David Altig recommends this paper from Michael Kouparitsas entitled “Is the U.S. Current Account Sustainable”. He poses the question initially in a manner similar to how Thomas Sargent and Neil Wallace posed the government deficit issue back in 1981. Updating the Sargent and Wallace Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic model to today’s General Fund deficit issue let […]
Inspired by a question from PGL about whether the US still has a comparative advantage in agricultural products, I have put together another trade-related table. The table provides a simple measure of where the US’s comparative advantages and disadvantages lie. (Note: for a list of items in each end-use category, see this document.) For each […]
This morning’s release of the trade data for March by the BEA showed a bit of a narrowing of the trade deficit on goods and services, from $60.6 bn in February down to $55.0 bn in March. This was due to slightly higher exports and a surprising drop in US imports. At this point let […]
Jason Furman analyzes the impact of the Pozen plan as well as the Pozen plus privatization plan on solvency in various ways. As far as long-run solvency defined in terms of the size of the 75-year shortfall, the former closes only 60% of it and the latter closes only 30% of it. In terms of […]
I pity Stephen Moore as the victim of poor timing. A Federal Appeals Court just gave Dick Cheney a victory in his coverup regarding the 2001 energy task force. The State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee no on the Bolton documents request. And the National Review decides to today is the day to […]