A link to the possible bailout of another major industry?

from Aguanomics Fixing Monopolistic Utilities [This is an important post. Please read the bit after my comment and please do respond/critique in the comments.] Angrybear has a post on the TVA fuckup (a retaining wall collapsed, letting loose a huge flood of flyash — the stuff left after burning coal — that buried houses, killed […]

by Bruce WebbWhat does it take? A stake through the heart? A bullet through the brain? Baker and Krugman do some pushback.Dean Baker in his post The Post’s Jihad against Social Security points to this article Obama Predicts Years of Deficits over $1 trillion and notes that they don’t hesitate to single out the usual […]

by cactus A Look at What the Next President’s Chief Economic Advisor Wrote About Tax Policy Since Christina Romer is gonna be Obama’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, its worth revisiting her work. Now, I’m not an academic, so I don’t read all that many papers. But I remember reading the March 2007 […]

Several recent events have been described as “just symbolism,” which apparently is a method of dismissing uncomfortable statements of fact, such as ‘Sarah Palin is the nominee for Vice President’ or ‘Rick Warren will give the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration.’ Apparently, these moments are supposed to have a lifespan closer to that of Britney […]

by cactus The End of the Recession: A Prediction Back in March, I noted we were in recession, and that the recession was somewhat different from previous recessions in that it had not been preceded by a nice sized cut in the real money supply. Put another way – an error by the Fed wasn’t […]

rdan (hat tip Stormy) Market Oracle has an opinion on where the trade deficit will be headed: Durable and capital goods The US’s manufacturing sector is concentrated in industries most vulnerable to an economic downturn, durable and capital goods. Durable goods are products that last for more than three years like SUVs, motor/sail boats, etc. […]

How is Social Security holding up given the terrible employment numbers? Well not as bad as I had feared. OAS::Opening balance//Projected year end balance-Intermediate Cost//Y-O-Y Increase//Year end balance-Low Cost//Y-O-Y increase-Low Cost$2.023 trillion // $2.216 trillion //$193 billion// $2.221 trillion// $198 billion DI::Opening balance//Projected year end balance-Intermediate Cost//Y-O-Y Increase//Year end balance-Low Cost//Y-O-Y increase-Low Cost$214.9 billion//$218.7 billion//$3.8 […]

Robert Waldmann I understand that traders are compensated roughly half based on mark to market profits in a given year and half on long term outcomes (the was the AIG AIG-FP deal). This implies that many people made a lot of money being wrong about the housing bubble etc. It also implies that the conditions […]

by Bruce Webb Paul Rosenberg has started an interesting series over at Open Left that in some ways could see my post What is the Nexus? as prologue. The first post in the series is Hegemony On Steroids–Episode 35,879: “The Neocons Couldn’t A Dunnit!” It starts by stating one set of revisionist talking points eagerly […]