… just scale accordingly (and ignore the lack of a statistically significant difference): Stupid or wilfull? You decide. From MediaMatters, by way of Digby. AB

Kristin Forbes of the Council of Economic Advisors spoke at an economic policy conference hosted by NABE on March 21. She told the audience that our tax system relies too heavily on the taxation of capital income. According to Tax Analyst, she revealed a definite White House interest in moving to a more consumption-based tax […]

Unsurprisingly, the Fed raised short-term interest rates by .25% again today. Slightly more surprisingly, the Fed is clearly growing more concerned with possible inflationary pressures, which the FOMC signaled with some new language in their statment. From the FOMC statement released this afternoon: Output evidently continues to grow at a solid pace despite the rise […]

There’s new inflation data coming out this week: the February PPI data was released this morning, and the CPI data comes out tomorrow. I’ll put up a post with a discussion of both releases tomorrow… but if you can’t wait until then to peruse the PPI data here’s the text of the PPI News Release: […]

Let’s use oil markets to say welcome to two new blogs from very different Republicans. Alas, the first is from Lawrence Kudlow who removed one of his posts but NRO still has this version: $55 Oil Won’t Last…Ultimately, the answer to high oil prices is a lot more production. That’s exactly what the Bush administration […]

In some dimensions, transatlantic diplomatic relations have been improving over the past few months. Yet in others they are clearly not. Bush’s nomination of Wolfowitz last week to head the World Bank prompted a rather cool response from Europe — in fact, EU finance ministers will discuss the nomination at their summit in Luxembourg this […]

At least the Bush Administration is consistent; talk prudence, deliver squander. The new budget is no exception. The NY Times projects $125 billion in additional deficit spending over the next 5 years, and $1 Trillion over the next ten years. I suggest reading the NY Times Editorial, “Washington’s Fiscal Meltdown“, but here is the short […]

We have a new contributor on Mondays, the (anonymous — we’ll call him C.R.) proprietor of Calculated Risk. By way of introduction, he’s a disillusioned Republican who I gather was — like the other bloggers here at Angry Bear — basically happy with the nation’s economic policy from 1993-2000. He’s also “pro-choice, pro-science (pro-evolution), adamant […]

In case anyone missed this, I’ll excerpt Matt Y. excerpting and expanding upon a post by Mark K.: Mark Kleiman has a must-read post on the appalling hypocrisy revealed by the conservative movement’s reaction to l’affaire Schiavo: Sun Hudson, a six-month-old boy with a fatal congenital disease, died Thursday after a Texas hospital, over his […]

Republican strategists call for this change in tactics: To pass Social Security reform this year, top Republican strategists say, President Bush and the GOP-led Congress must redirect the debate by stressing that their plan includes a crucial safety-net protection…That guarantee, which is included in certain Social Security reform bills, could be used as an effective […]