Jck the Hack Snow appeared on ABC’s This Week and made it clear that the Bush White House is interested in the carve-out version of privatization and not the add-on version of personal accounts. He claimed that this plan, which takes away some of your retirement funds, can make you better off because of the […]

Donald Luskin wants you to believe that Al Gore supports George Bush’s privatization proposal: There’s a way that the advocates of reform could easily make this case. All they have to do is borrow a famous buzzword from none other than Al Gore. No, I’m not kidding. The fact is that personal accounts are nothing […]

The BIS today issued the March edition of The BIS Quarterly Review. One of the interesting statistics contained in it is the fraction of foreign currency assets owned by international banks that is held in dollars. This fraction seems to have fallen during 2003 and 2004: March 7 (Bloomberg) — Asian banks, including central banks, […]

This story by Rex Nutting of MarketWatch warmed the cockles of my heart, for two reasons. First, because at least one member of the regular business press seems to be catching on to Greenspan: Greenspan did President Bush two big favors this past week, endorsing the president’s calls for fundamental reforms in Social Security and […]

Upcoming DebateSocial Security: Is It Really a Crisis?A free public debate in New York CityTuesday, 15 March 2005 – 7pm-8:30pm New York Society for Ethical Culture2 W 64th Street, New York, NY 10023(on the corner of Central Park West)Featuring Michael Tanner, Director of Health & Welfare Studies, The Cato Institute, and Paul Krugman, author and […]

It looks like I have to drag out the only Andrew Biggs piece that ever got something right. Why? It seems that Human Events has featured Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) latest plan to destroy Social Security: Ryan: There’s a safety net underneath the accounts, which means you’ll get what you would have otherwise gotten with […]

Clearly I have been remiss of late, since I have not read Fafblog in far too long. Today Fafblog gets it exactly right on recent political developments in the Middle East, and reminds me why this is a good blog. Maybe the best blog. Kash

Many thanks to Kash for posting the good news on the payroll employment increase as well as very good commentary on the household survey numbers, such as the modest rise in the civilian labor force, as well as the fact that the employment-population ratio fell from 62.4% to 62.3%. All that is left to add […]

The BLS’s employment report came out this morning, and it showed a strong gain in employment for the first time in several months: Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 262,000 in February and the unemployment rate edged up to 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job growth […]

First, it was Senator Reid annd now, it’s Paul Krugman: Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt. On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget […]