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by Bruce Webb A bipartisan group of Senators is making a push to tie an increase in the debt ceiling to establishment of a Commission whose focus in on reducing the growth of entitlements. Now clearly Medicare spending growth at its current rate is not sustainable, which fact makes the current full-throated defense of that […]

by cactus I’ve noticed the issue of Obama blaming his predecessor for the poor economy has become a bit of a minor cause on the right. So I was curious as to whether there was precedent for this kind of thing. For how long can a president blame his predecessor for economic problems? I’m guessing, […]

China exported its way to a $2 trillion dollar fortress of F/X reserves ($USD mostly), while the US borrowed its way into a hole deep enough to spark a vast global recession. Who’s to blame? Given the symbiotic relationship in the chart above, it’s hard to blame any one individual, group, or even country. But […]

by Bruce Webb In recent weeks there has been some furor over the new push to tie an increase in the debt ceiling to the establishment of a new Deficit Commission based on proposals but forth on the Senate side in Conrad-Gregg or on the House side in Cooper-Wolf. Ezra Klein today tells us (rather […]

by Martin Ford Job Automation, Purchasing Power and Consumer Spending I’ve had several recent posts here arguing that automation technology is likely to depress wages and lead to significant structural unemployment in the coming years. One of the most common criticisms of my argument is that I am “not thinking like an economist” and that […]

Not only did the U.S. Treasury just sell $29 Billion worth of four-week bills at par (i.e., they got $29 Billion for them, and will return $29 Billion on 29 December), but the bid to cover ratio was over 5:1 (pdf link; had $154B in bids for $29B in securities). This is down 0.06% from […]

Remember the argument that we shouldn’t tax people because they’ll just move elsewhere? The British government appears not to believe it. Will the Geithner/Summers axis continue lying that “we can’t do that”? Since it really is a Windfall Profit, taxing it seems a reasonable idea. And now we won’t even be able to pretend that […]

NYT headline: Audit Finds TARP Program Effective. Paragraph six of the same article: The Treasury’s lack of clarity about the program’s goals, the oversight panel said, made it hard to assess its overall effectiveness. Mr. Geithner is scheduled to testify on Thursday in his quarterly appearance before the five-member panel. [emphasis mine] Clearly. one of […]