by cactus Ranking Presidents on Real Economic Growth – The Definitive List As we get closer to election time, the level of invective seems to be going up. What I find interesting is how the intersection between that invective, general ignorance, and outright charlatanism. For example, mention of FDR is cropping up a lot in […]

UPDATE: Brad DeLong notes that there is no requirement, under the bailout bill, for halfway measures and delays: Every other country that is in this business is nationalizing the banks and injecting capital into them. Only the United States is operating on the asset side along. It’s unlikely to work, and Neel is now responsible. […]

Ken Houghton Or at least optimistic. McCain is going after Medicare and Medicaid. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending […]

Robert Waldmann Looks like I should have put the post to which the post below links here. Thanks for clicking the link. I will try to add up by adding a point here. Sebastian Mallaby argues that deregulation did not cause the crisis, because hedge funds are regulated even less than investment banks. Based on […]

Robert makes a case refuting Mallaby on deregulation. James Galbraith responds to Mallaby on deregulation as well (hat tip Economist’s View )

by cactus Two Frauds, and Preventing Another Actually, a lot of things are obvious to people with the information, but are best ignored. Back in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, a bunch of really smart guys from the big American banks were making huge loans to dictatorships in South America. They knew damn well […]

Bailout Bill, With Benefits for Student Lenders, Passes Congress Washington — The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the $700-billion financial-system bailout bill that was approved on Wednesday by the Senate. The plan would let the federal government ease credit markets by purchasing bank assets, involving primarily mortgages but also other types of assets, including […]

by reader ilsm Don’t ask, don’t tell: whether anything in DoD is worth the expense of scarce national resources. Read GAO Testimony: Fundamental Changes Are Needed to Improve Weapon Program Outcomes In 2000 the defense acquisition portfolio was: 75 programs with planned commitments of $790B, increases from planned R&D of 27% and average schedule delay […]

Stormy noted that Wells Fargo’s bill is based in part on “exploiting a presumed tax loophole.” I forgot to ask the question one should always ask when confronted with a Chess Ending problem, “What was the move before?” In this case, we know (from A C Shareholder’s comment) that Wells had been discussions to purchase […]

A detail of tax law makes all the difference in Stormy’s post below. Buy the whole thing, get the tax break. Buy part of it, you don’t.* The other half of the answer is that “timing is everything.” And playing Chicken with the FDIC often has Unintended Consequences.** So let’s turn the continuous-not-discrete timeline details […]