For an interesting comment on my recent dialogue with David Altig over Charles Krauthammer’s view that the Social Security Trust Fund’s assets are worthless piece of paper, see William Polley’s What Does It Mean to Default. Among the many very sensible passages is this one: If the Fed is really independent, it can honor its […]

If there are Federal Reserve notes in your wallet, I’ll gladly buy you a cup of coffee if you give them to me. And why would he make this deal? Check this out: 2042 is the fictional date for the fictional bankruptcy of a fictional trust fund. Let’s start with basics. The Social Security system […]

Via Jesse Taylor, comes the latest from Arnold Kling. Jesse gave Arnold’s ranting a nice reply, but one little empirical matter here. Arnold seems to think the rich have a high marginal propensity to save. But Glenn Hubbard, Bush’s first CEA chair, often wrote that the rich have a high marginal propensity to consume. What […]

Ramesh Ponnuru gets this right: The payroll tax currently applies only to the first $90,000 of wages. If you make more than that, payroll taxes are not taken out of your additional wages. Bush was asked whether he would support raising that “cap” on payroll taxes. His answer: “The only thing I’m not opened-minded about […]

Krugman leaves absolutely no room for doubt about what he thinks of Alan Greenspan: A disturbing thing about Wednesday’s hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging […]

Ramesh is supposed to be one of the few decent NRO writers but this column puts forth an alleged parallel that is just all wet: Democrats have drawn several lessons from these parallels. The first is that there are political dividends in opposing big, complex presidential initiatives. Democrats once reviled Newt Gingrich, but now he […]

For the brazen dishonesty from the privatization crowd about what FDR said, see Kevin Drum. For the brazen dishonesty from the same crowd about what Clinton said, see Joshua Marshall. Now it turns out that the Club for Growth blog even lies about what their own allies are saying about what Clinton said as Kerry […]

Undeterred by prior embarrassments, Stephen Moore is determined to be the #1 clown over at the National Review: Establishing personal accounts will require about $2 trillion in government borrowing over the next 15 years. But once the accounts are in place, the government saves about $10 trillion in future obligations. Any private business with large […]

The Poor Man has the best take I’ve seen so far: Everyone is still missing the point of the story. The story is not, as nitwits like Howie Kurtz maintain, that people are being mean to someone just because he’s conservative. The story is not that Gannon is a hypocrite for promoting an anti-gay agenda. […]

Our president once made the following statement: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.” If only our current Fed Chairman had taken those sage words to heart: Mr. Greenspan’s comments, in testimony to the Senate […]