Follow-up to the Unemployment Rate Puzzle AB pointed to a line of thinking that suggests that increasing numbers of people on disability may be contributing to the fall in the labor force participation rate (LFPR) that I pointed out the other day in a post on The Unemployment Rate Puzzle. Among the excellent comments on […]

Kash’s Call #3: A Financial Crisis in the US? My third prediction: there will not be a major financial crisis this year in the US, a la Argentina.(*) Why not? Many of the ingredients for serious financial problems are in place for the US right now: massive government borrowing with no realistic prospect of future […]

More Unemployment In an earlier post Kash gave some data on declining labor force participation, a decline that is particularly sharp among men and people with a high school degree or more education. We don’t really have an explanation for the pattern, though one theory is that people are going back to school — basically […]

If Only For Eagles fans and more importantly, for those who dislike Rush Limbaugh, be sure to click here and then watch the “Frank’s Picks: Divisional Playoffs” video segment. Watch to the end. Via Atrios, who I suspect is very happy today. AB

Completely and Utterly Damaging And depressing, too (but unlikely to be devastating.) That’s my take after watching Leslie Stahl interview former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and author Ron Suskind. It looks like O’Neill gave Suskind every document he had, including transcripts of cabinet and NSC meetings. Other anonymous top officials apparently followed suit. The forthcoming […]

The American Street Check out the latest group blog, The American Street. The proprieters are unveiling the contributors all week, but so far they have Dave Neiwert from Orcinus (who just had his 1-year blog anniversary), Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and Kevin Hayden/Cowboy Kahill, with more to come. Should be worth […]

60 Minutes Sunday Should definitely be worth watching; Leslie Stahl will be interviewing former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill (who was basically fired) about his time in the White House. Here’s the lead from CBS’s teaser: President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he “was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf […]

Conservatives Against Republicans The American Conservative Union is launching a campaign against Republican fiscal policy. I never thought I would see such a thing. Republican Congress on a Wild Spending Spree Federal government spending is out of control. Despite the Republican Party hegemony – control of the White House and both houses of Congress – […]

Kash’s Call #2: The Economic Recovery My second prediction: the recovery will continue apace for another few months… but will start to die out by summer 2004. Why? Put simply, I think that the bulk of the economic growth that we’re experiencing right now is due to the credit card binge that AB so aptly […]

The Unemployment Rate Puzzle This morning’s release of December’s unemployment data by the BLS contains the same puzzle that’s been dogging this economy for months. Why has the unemployment rate continued to fall over the past 6 months, even though jobs have not been created? The answer is that people are dropping out of the […]