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

Kash’s Call #1: China and the Yuan I’ve gone back and forth on this one a bit, but this is my first prediction: China will maintain the yuan’s peg to the dollar throughout 2004. Why? The key is China’s banking sector. I know, “the banking sector” sounds like an incredibly boring answer, but for better […]

The IMF Criticizes Bush’s Economic Policy Yesterday the IMF released a paper called “U.S. Fiscal Policies and Priorities for Long-Run Sustainability.” In it, the IMF delivers a surprisingly sharp criticism of the Bush administration’s fiscal policy. It’s the first time that I’m aware of that the IMF has criticized US policy in such strong terms. […]

Ready for 2004 I’m finally back at my desk, after a couple of weeks of some play and some more work. After clearing off enough mail so that I can now actually SEE it (my desk, that is), I’m now ready to write again. One of the first things I’ll be doing is giving you […]

Fester’s Last Guest Post I would like to thank Angry Bear and Kash for allowing me to guest blog for the past two weeks here at Angry Bear. I have had a wonderful time learning from your comments and reactions to my writing. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to write before such a large and […]

Whore of The Year I’ll admit that my first thought was “Tim Russert by a mile” for his idiotic performance with Dean back in August, his idiotic first interview with Clark, his idiotic interview of Hillary Clinton, and general hackery and whoreishness. But as Horse points out, David Brooks is making a strong if somewhat […]

TNR Jumps the Shark I can only hope that two of my favorite writers, two people rarely far off in their analysis of domestic policy, John Judis and Jonathan Chait, were not part of the “by the editors” group at The New Republic that today officially endorsed Joe Lieberman. This article by Chait suggests that […]

Don’t Be an A**hole WARNING: If you click the following link, there will be sound, words that you are likely to find quite hilarious but that your colleagues and bosses may find offensive. That said, here’s a must-see parody of MoveOn’s Bush in 30 Seconds campaign. (For the real thing from MoveOn, click here.) Also […]

Democrats in The House … The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is the main organization in charge of putting Democrats into the House of Representatives. As such, they are not surprisingly dismayed by the latest ruling on Texas redistricting. The DCCC has now issued an official statement; here’s the highlight: The Court’s decision will now […]

Following up on Yuan Post I am following up on the Yuan post because Anne is raising several good points and also some new information for me. First, my primary concern as I stated in comments is not a raise in the value of the dollar against the Euro. Another 10-20% change in the terms […]

Texas Redistricting The Republican redistricting of Texas crossed another threshold yesterday, when a three judge panel ruled that the DeLay Plan was politically, not racially, motivated and therefore legal: “While heavily aware of the long history of discrimination against Latinos and Blacks in Texas . . . we are compelled to conclude that this plan […]