This link provides great visuals for those who follow the media and the pundits.

By Spencer One of the strongest points being made about economic policy is that the Bush tax cuts must be extended because of the economic crises. Yes, standard analysis is that a tax hike in the middleof an economic downturn is bad policy as far as short run economic stimulous. But maybe part of our […]

Op ed by reader tinman A Failout in Three PartsOrWhat Do We Do From Here? Failout Part 1 – The Solution or “Pulling the TARP Over the Body (Economy)” What’s the best answer to our “credit crisis”? Pay the money to the banks via the borrowers.Pay off their mortgage; make the note whole in the […]

by reader SKG The Fulton County Commission is a 7 member commision, with 5 elected by district, and 2 elected county-wide. The result of this structure was that the residents of the City of Atlanta (and to a lesser degree South Fulton) completely controlled the County Commission by controlling 2 seats, and the 2 county-wide […]

Robert Waldmann In a particularly silly op-ed Sebastian Mallaby argued that deregulation wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis and presented as evidence the fact that hedge funds, which are regulated even less than investment banks, are doing fine. Of course the reason that there wasn’t a run on hedge funds is that investors can’t […]

Robert Waldmann was working on a post about how financial innovation is profitable and pernicious. The ideas are that profitable new financial instruments are used to evade prudential regulations and to make financial markets more confusing so unsophisticated investors can be fleeced. Then I thought of a kind of financial innovation which might be profitable […]

The Nigerians appear to be back, sending me the same e-mail as before, clearly in desperation: My Friends, I hope you’ll take the time today to read the email below from Governor Palin. I guess everyone else had my reaction. (As an aside, am I the only one who sees “My Friends” at the opening […]

Ms. mochi-tsuki discovers that the Washington Post has no copyeditors and cannot do math. If this were another blog, I would be typing “Why, oh why, can’t we have a better press corps” here. Instead, let’s just leave it at: if you can’t extract data from the census correctly, what are you doing publishing a […]

by Bruce Webb From Newsweek’s The Stumper (h/t slinkerwink’s diary at dKos) Okay nobody expected Sarah Palin to be the sharpest political crayon in the box, but surely someone on the McCain/Palin team has looked at a political cartoon over the last hundred plus years plus and understands the whole donkey/elephant deal. This ain’t advanced […]

at Erin’s place. Tom puts an end to the “oh, they were just mistakes” tax argument: The thing about [Sarah Palin taking her spouse and especially her kids with her on business trips]…is that the attempt to edit the terms of the trips after the fact could be seen as evidence of intent to commit […]