Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Nobel Prize in Economics

This year’s winners are Kydland and Prescott. Atrios and Stirling Newberry provide nice summaries for non-economists of some of their principal insights. Let me just add two quick thoughts. First, I’ve never been convinced that the “real business cycle” model (i.e. the idea that recessions are the result of negative supply shocks rather than demand […]

Politics over Good Policy, Yet Again

Failure in Iraq would be a disaster. I think most of us, including Bush and Kerry, agree to that statement. If Iraq remains a state steeped in chaos and lawlessness, it will remain a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. It will ensure that US credibility in the Middle East remains in tatters. So […]

Markets In Action

Uggabugga’s got the details. In fact, the market seems to already be exacting a price for SBGI’s nonsense — this plan may not make it past the shareholders. AB UPDATE: A quick check of Sinclair’s board reveals 4 inside and 4 outside directors, with the insiders including the CEO David “Solicitation Arrest” Smith. So this […]

Jack Snow spins Wolf Blitzer

The transcript of Wolf’s interview with the Treasury Secretary can be found here. After Wolf noted the fall in employment per the Payroll Survey, Snow first makes excuses and then offers: If you look at, Wolf, and this is important to make – a point to make. If you look at the broader survey of […]

The Natural Rate of Unemployment

Bush apologists used to note that the current unemployment rate is near the average during the Clinton years, which forgets that unemployment fell during Clinton’s Administration and has increased under the current Administration. Now they are comparing to the current 5.4% unemployment rate to the average rate since 1948, which has been 5.6%. This comparison […]

The Source of Bush’s Budget Assertion

Kevin Drum wrote a post about Bush’s statement during the debate that he has restrained spending growth. As Kevin points out, his statement turns up into down and black into white. However, Bush didn’t pull his figures out of thin air. The exact phrasing of his statement was “Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising [sic] […]

An Angry Bush

Was it just me, or did Bush come across as pretty angry and defensive? A couple of times, it seemed to me that he was so agressive with his answers that he was almost yelling at the poor person asking the question. Did anyone else have that impression? However, while Kerry was speaking Bush did […]

The Bush Economy, in Context

With today’s new employment numbers we can now take a fairly complete look at the overall performance of the economy during Bush’s entire term in office. This is a stretch of nearly four years, which (as I mentioned in my earlier post) is probably a long enough period of time to allow the economic policies […]

Employment-to-Population Ratio Fell

Maybe the only way for Bush to spin the employment report is to mention that the unemployment rate stayed at 5.4%. But this is because the civilian labor force fell by 221,000 as the household survey of employment fell by 201,000. The labor force participation rate fell to 65.9 percent and the employment-to-population ratio fell […]

Summarizing Bush’s Job Creation Record

We now have the final employment figures that both sides can use down the home stretch of the campaign. The Bush campaign can truthfully state that 1.71 million new jobs have been created in the last year (or 1.78 million new jobs since August 2003). But when hearing such numbers, always remember to apply context: […]