by Brenda Rossercross posted from Econospeak with permission of author. Global Trade Imbalances as a Statistical Artifact: Today, the latest spin that purports to describe the still unfolding global economic crisis is that of ‘global trade imbalance’, with particular attention being focused on the US and China. The US, we are told, has a huge […]

by cactus A Graphical Look at the National Debt in the Bail-out Era Apologies for the lighter than normal posting, but things have been very hectic around here. Aside from some health issues facing my wife and work being particularly interesting right now, I’m reviewing a lot of stuff that is coming back fast and […]

Even more than Digby on CalPERS, the one piece everyone should read today is Charlie Stross on International Travel. Since this is an economics blog, let’s pull a key section: Here’s the rub: security is a state of mind, not a procedure. Procedures can’t cope with attackers, because they’re inflexible. If you search passengers for […]

by run75441 Breaking The Healthcare Cost Curve Quite a bit of the commentary has been written on the question of how-to-rein-in rising healthcare costs and to slow costs to less than the rate of inflation. Massachusetts has been able to provide healthcare to its citizens but still struggles with keeping healthcare insurance costs low and […]

The CPI report was encouraging. The total CPI rose 0.2% and the year over year increase is only 2.6%. Although real averge hourly earnings fell, real weekly earnings were unchanged. The core CPI actually fell for the first time since 1982, bring the year over year change in the core CPI to 1.6%. The 6 […]

by Linda Beale Torture–It’s the Economy, Stupid….. Naked Capitalism ran a “guest post” by “George Washington” yesterday on Cheney’s role in furthering the Bush Administration’s torture agenda: Cheney Admits to Being a War Criminal, Naked Capitalism (Feb. 16, 2010). Washington notes that the mainstream media’s approach to Cheney–letting him argue for torture without ever challenging […]

by Rebecca Wilder (Rdan…published two day ago at Newsneconomics) Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries: was it really that bad? No. I can’t believe that the Financial Times can get away with this. From the FT, titled Foreign demand falls for Treasuries: Foreign demand for US Treasury securities fell by a record amount in December as […]

by Linda Beale Financial Reforms: no dearth of suggestions, but a lack of action As economists track the signs of a possibly receding recession, investors test the waters for investing, and Congress is pushed to focus more on deficit reduction than on economic stimulus (probably wrongly), the financial institution imbalance that started it all goes […]

Leninism in the USAFirst let me define Leninism. To me the key feature of Leninism is that Lenin declared the party to be the highest good. Thus acts were to be judged as pro-party or anti-party. In fact the very same acts were good or bad depending on whether they were done by the party […]