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

Pre-Presidential Succession

Addressing the question of what to do if the presidency changes hands and both the incoming president and vice-president are killed before choosing a cabinet, Eugene Volokh comments on an interesting suggestion from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex): Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, proposed an interesting Senate […]

Stock Options and Transfer Pricing

Part VII of George Mundstock’s US Taxation of Multinational Enterprise (July 28) suggests that the arm’s length standard for avoiding transfer pricing manipulation does not work. Maybe it’s the very high standards of discourse in his first sixth threads, but I found this argument a bit unconvincing. But I’d like to take this argument “To […]

B and S

Those are the letters Chris Mathews and Pat Buchanan need to understand in order to tell “Osama” from “Obama”; learning those same letters could also help them understand the very things they utter. Here’s Mathews, and no, I’m not making this up: MATHEWS: [Buchanan], … Would you rather have Obama or Osama as your key […]

The More Things Change …

… The more they stay the same. Since George W. Bush has so much in common with Herbert Hoover, particularly in the areas of jobs and trade, and since I liked Obama’s speech so much, I decided to search for the 1932 Democratic Keynote speech and see if there were any interesting parallels. I couldn’t […]

IRS data: Americans’ incomes fell for two years

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Americans’ overall income shrank for two consecutive years after stocks plunged in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the current tax system was put in place during World War II, according to a published report Thursday. The New York Times, reporting data from the Internal Revenue Service, said […]

And Now, Random Convention Thoughts

Al Sharpton: good speech. My favorite line was this: You [President Bush on Friday before the Urban League] said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule. That’s where […]

Free Trade Update Matt Yglesias reports from the convention that Laura D’Andrea Tyson (former Clinton National Economic Adviser and current Kerry advisor), in no uncertain terms, stated that Kerry supports free trade: It is an irony that “the evidence is getting stronger every day that globalization has benefits while skepticism is growing stronger.” “When people […]

Computer Science and Outsourcing Notwithstanding the cry and furor over outsourcing, and several poignant stories readers and commenters have shared, the market for computer scientists appears to still be strong: $49,691 seems pretty good for entry level computer scientists. AB

Bush More Like Carter Than Reagan … as measured by oil prices: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Wednesday that crude stocks rose in the United States by 1.2 million barrels to 300.5 million barrels amid record imports of 11.3 million barrels per day (bpd). The $43 per barrel price is the loftiest level […]