Reader Steve writes in with a good question about Greenspan’s 3-Card Monte: Love your site and have been following the various articles about Social Security. Admittedly, my understanding of the system is very raw as is probably the case with most people who are not economists. My question is therefore very basic. How does the […]
Many of us (see for example Brad DeLong) have been wondering for some time why the bond market does not seem to be reflecting expectations of a dollar depreciation into its prices. Shouldn’t investors be demanding higher interest rates to compensate them for the exchange rate risk that they’re taking on by holding dollars? Yet […]
By way of expanding on some of the recent posts here, and also at CalPundit, (and also because I’ve been too busy to post regularly of late), here’s a re-post of something I wrote on March 2, 2004: ************* Following up on Kash’s earlier post about Greenspan, Krugman’s op/ed also highlights a fairly bold bait […]
The Bull Moose says it is sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council and judging from this piece on the politics of the Social Security debate, I hope Congressional Democrats pay attention to their blog. As far as the economics, the Moose points to this wisdom from E. J. Dionne: …if Social Security privatization is supposed […]
Kevin Drum has two posts of interest. The first is a longer version of an excellent comment made by Bakho to my last post on this issue as it notes the payroll tax increase of 1983, which was supposed to be for prefunding our Social Security retirement fund but now looks like it was nothing […]
New personal income and spending figures for October were released this morning. The BEA reports a headline figure of a 0.6% increase in income and a 0.7% increase in spending, both of which are quite high. Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the report, too. Much of the increase in income and spending […]
The very good discussion of the Social Security issue between Andrew Samwick and Max Sawicky has been extended as Andrew and Max point to this contribution from David Altig. David’s blog will become a must read for me – and his point is simply that the timing of spending versus tax receipts is less important […]
This Reuters story tries to give one of those “fair and balanced” discussions but one word tips us off just a wee bit. The story includes: Facing record budget deficits, the Bush administration likely will turn to short-term government borrowing to help finance its plan to add personal retirement accounts to Social Security, officials said […]
Had Senator Kerry been elected President, we would be talking about his proposal to reduce the corporate tax rate to 32% and to eliminate the deferral benefits under Subpart F, which would have reduced the temptation to abuse the transfer pricing regulations under section 482. Instead, there is much discussion of The American Jobs Creation […]
The Washington Post updates us this morning on the current thinking in the White House about changing Bush’s economic team. It looks like Snow will be out soon too: Aides said changing four of the five top economic officials — including the Treasury and Commerce secretaries, with only budget director Joshua B. Bolten likely to […]