And now for the other, darker side of my tale: the hard landing for the US’s CA imbalance. I envision the hard landing to be triggered by some sort of shock to the system. One of the problems with the soft landing story is that there are many, many different possible shocks to choose from […]

The Club for Growth’s Soc. Sec. blog had been previewing a debate on March 15 between Michael Tanner and Paul Krugman forgetting to mention that Joshua Marshall was also invited to speak. Via Joshua comes the transcript. Michael Tanner led off trying to claim that the Trust Fund has $12 trillion in debt right now […]

My only opinion about the Terri Schiavo issue is that this is a private matter so the politicians have no right to intervene. With that said, I have to admire the discussions from Aaron Brown. Aaron interviewed Rick Santorum last night and the Senator proved over and over how dishonest he can be. First of […]

Via Jesse Taylor comes Kevin Hasset: To what extent are Social Security taxes really “taxes” in the traditional sense? Do the lines in the sand make sense? The question is not as odd or revolutionary as it may sound, and the answer has a significant impact on all sorts of debates. For example, opponents of […]

Nouriel Roubini and David Altig debate the likelihood of a hard versus soft landing for the US’s financial imbalances in today’s WSJ econoblog. For those who aren’t familiar with the arguments, let me try to boil them down a bit. I think that Roubini’s hard landing scenario can be summarized as this: The US current […]

Active commenter cum blogger Elaine Supkis now has her own blog: Culture of Life News! (URL updated) AB

I have never been a fan of Lindsey Graham but the enemy of my enemy – well you know the drill. Graham once endorse the same kind of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ plan for privatization that James DeMint is pushing. But now that he is uttering the suggestion of tax rate increases, DeMint […]

The big news from this Bloomberg story is captured by its title: Stock-Market Returns May Not Meet Bush’s Social Security Hopes But when other economists noted slower long-term growth would suggest lower stock returns, the Treas. Sec. suggested we would still have strong long-term growth: Treasury’s Snow says high stock-market returns will be possible because […]

Via Joshua Marshall comes this article by Dan Balz: Schwarzenegger says the proposals are needed to fix the structural deficit facing the state and the way politics are practiced in Sacramento. His critics say they will do nothing of the sort and accuse him of lacking the courage to do what two of his GOP […]

Mr. Magoo sees bubbles too! Just last month, in testimony to Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan opined on housing: “I think we’re running into certain problems in certain localized areas.” Considering he never saw the Nasdaq bubble, the housing bubble must be enormous. And localized? According to an FDIC report released in February, the housing […]