by Bruce Webb Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. The otherwise estimable Ezra falls into the trap.Bipartisan Policy Making Hertzberg is wrong at so many levels and so many points that you hardly know where to start. I have bolded some of the really wrong-headed claims. Rick Hertzberg notices some Republicans calling […]

Cross and guest post by Raymond L. Richman ofTrade and Taxes Greenspan Protesteth Too Much Raymond L. Richman Alan Greenspan in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal 3-11-09 entitled “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble” denies that the “easy money” policies of the Federal Reserve produced the U.S. housing bubble “that is at […]

by cactus Wasting the Plenty Via Atrios, this piece of bad news from Michael Kranish at the Boston Globe: The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no […]

Robert Waldmann The bill passed by the House of Representatives which imposes a 90% tax on bonuses paid to people who earn over 250,000/year by firms which received TARP funds makes the hair on Noam Scheibers neck stand up.He writes As for the consequences we can’t foresee, most of them relate to the precedent of […]

The House has just passed a bill taxing Bonuses of employees (and consultants I hope) who earn over $ 250,000/year of TARP recipients at a rate of 90%. I think this is an excellent bill. My reasoning is simple. If I were to ignore incentive effects, I would support a 90% tax on income over […]

Lawrence Wilkerson tells the truth and shames the Devil: Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of […]

by Bruce Webb In a post at his site Andrew Biggs points us to a NewMajority.com piece by him Survey: Half of workers would opt out of Social Security if they could which in turn points to a survey sponsored by Sun Life Financial Results show that almost half (48%) would prefer to stop paying […]

Looking at Population Change data derived from version 6.2 of the Penn World Tables. It appears that the population of Kuwait declined by 55.46% in 1991, only to increase 48.64% in the following year. I’m inclined to think of this as measurement error, not a mass exodus following by a mass return after the invasion. […]

By Spencer The details within the leading index provided some very interesting details. Within the current index real manufacturing and trade sales were: ……………………….(million 2000 $)Dec 08…………………..893,617Jan 09…………………..895,824Feb 09…………………..896,837 An uptick in real manufacturing and sales is generally a concurrent indicator of the end of a recession. Of Course this depends on the assumption that […]

By Spencer Yesterday’s bond market reaction to the Fed’s policy announcement was interesting.