Sam Wang explains why he reports a 99% probability of an Obama win and fivethirtyeight.com has only a 62.4% probability. I learned a lot from his post due to my incredible ignorance. I go to www.fivethirtyeigth.com often enough that Firefox proposes it first when I type www, but I had never bothered to read the […]
The Century Foundation Medicare Reform Working Group I am delighted to announce that The Century Foundation has created a working group to look at Medicare Reform. I’ll be directing it. We’re going to do the work online, communicating with each other on a closed list-serve. In this way, we’ll be able to get a lot […]
As noted last week, we are in Montreal, and Videotron was scheduled today to install telephone, television, and internet services. They came through with flying colors. At approximately 12:50, I made a phone call to inquire about the arrival time of the individuals I had been expecting. It was revealed by the representative that they […]
By: Divorced one like Bush Being that there is a lot of “authoritative” talking going on about the cause of the up’s and down’s of oil and one cause being suggested is the anticipation of storms, I thought looking at the history of storms and oil price would help toward answering the hypothesis of oil […]
(Erroneously put up as XXXVII)Prior to 2004 Social Security Crisis was explained with a simple narrative: Boomers retire placing enormous strain on system, Trust Funds go bankrupt in short order, checks stop. Result? Social Security won’t be there for me. This storyline was always nonsense, as long as payroll tax is being collected benefits would […]
Hat tip to Robert’s Stochastic thoughts for this link to Steve Benen. The bet is on for 100 flip flops before election time. What is a flip flop versus reasoned change of viewpoint?
Aguanomic’s David Zetland is collecting great sources on the rights and economic of water. My time is restricted currently, but think it is worh passing on as it stands. TP1: Favoring Farmers This week, we have a few rants from an anonymous guest (The Teal Pimpernel?). Here’s the first: There is a water conservation bill […]
The always smart Kevin Drum writes The windfall profits tax is a dumb idea, and I wish Obama didn’t support it, but I guess politics is politics. It’s not the biggest deal in the world. I asked in comments what’s so dumb about a windfall profits tax. I haven’t checked how many commenters responded to […]
Bloomberg reports: ExxonMobil bought back $29 billion of its own stock in 2006, $28 billion in 2007 and has already bought back $16 billion in the first half of 2008. Even so, it reports $39 billion in cash on hand and is all but certain to report more than $40billion in profit, along with $32 […]
Hat tip to Economist’s View for this post from Vox EU: Obama, the optimist on trade, by Susan Ariel Aaronson, Vox EU: Around the world, the press has portrayed the 2008 US presidential election as a choice between freer trader John McCain and “protectionist” Barack Obama. That traditional paradigm has helped the media simplify the […]