Martin Ford offers further thoughts on where we are headed. An Alternate Theory about the Root Cause of the Current Economic Crisis Bernanke’s speech in Atlanta a month ago focused a lot of attention on the debate about the forces that led to the current crisis. Was it primarily Greenspan’s low interest rates, or as […]
Is it really Good News that changes in Real Private Inventories were 3.4% of that 5.7% Q-on-Q GDP in Q4? (h/t Alea’s Twitter feed) Most reasonable assumption: firms overproduced, relative to actual buying, in anticipation of the Xmas season. Maybe more later.
John Scalzi makes a clear case that Amazon’s determination to subsidize the Kindle is coming at the expense of Authors’s and their Publishers: This asinine jockeying over electronic book prices has very little to do with what’s actually good or useful for anyone other than the manufacturer of a piece of hardware… who also happens […]
Robert Waldmann The Congressional Budget Office is different from you and me. Their forecasts are authoratative — literally. The rules of the House and the Senate refer to CBO estimates and forecasts not some debatable underlying reality. Hence this slightly edited dialog Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman: [skip]We’re not in the old situation where Sen. Grassley […]
The Washington Post carries the full transcript. Worth the read and even watching. Update: Here is the C-SPAN coverage.(h/t MG) This is very good. President Speaks at GOP Retreat President Obama – Full Q&A with Republican Members of Congress
Robert Waldmann is back I didn’t mean to stop blogging for so long. I apologize. I also apologize for this post which is one of my occasional screeds against welfare reform. Oddly there seems to be almost a consensus that welfare reform was a good policy. I think this is based entirely on the fact […]
by Maggie Maharcrossposted with Health Beat Who Voted for Brown in Massachusetts — and Why? The media continues to report that the Massachusetts vote was a referendum on health care reform — and that this has the White House worried. If so, the White House is wrong. Take a look at polling conducted by Hart […]
by Linda Beale Job creation–tax cuts are not the right tool Not unexpectedly, the “think tanks” that claim to be nonpartisan but that conduct research sponsored by corporate interests and support “capital market” solutions to economic problems are at it again pushing more tax breaks for the huge corporations that just gained more legislative clout […]
by Linda Beale Obama’s State of the Union Tax Proposals President Obama delivered his first State of the Union speech tonight, assuring us that we could jump-start job creation through tax cuts for businesses and gain needed relief for families through tax cuts for middle-class households. What Obama offers is, as usual, a mixed bag–too […]