Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Economics Makes for Strange Sick-Bed Fellows

Obama ready to cave in to insurance industry AKA ‘Her Way’; Obama Health Plan Could Go In Clinton’s DirectionTeddy Davis, John Santucci and Gregory Wallace ABC News 06.29.2008 Obama’s surrogate [Dr. Kavita Patel] made her comments Wednesday while representing him at a National Journal health-policy forum moderated by Ron Brownstein, the political director of Atlantic […]

Opportunity. Costs.

Tyler Cowen takes a premise of Arnold Kling’s: My guess is that most of the younger (aged 30-34) highly-educated folks are children of two highly-educated parents. My guess is that many of the older (aged 55-59) highly-educated folks are children of a college-educated father but not a college-educated mother. I don’t think we have a […]

One in 300, or the Only one in Government?

UPDATE: Brad DeLong lists some of the Usual Suspects who are Not in the Line-up. John McCain’s 300 economists who support his Jobs for America Plan (via Tyler Cowen, non-sociopath, who provides an appropriate context for the list) includes one person, an Ike Brannon, whose affiliation is listed as “Department of the Treasury” and who, […]

Knzn gives new definition to "infrastructure"

For those who don’t want to try to read about John McCain’s 2 – 1 = 7 calculations, a couple of interesting links. It’s missing the appropriate equations, so I suspect a few of the simplifying assumptions are skewed, and he doesn’t mention that the industry in question has always been at the forefront of […]

The Rule of Law: Compare and Contrast

The Most Trusted Name in News: Former secretaries of state James Baker III and Warren Christopher say the next time the president goes to war, Congress should be required to say whether it agrees. The co-chairmen of a bipartisan study group have proposed legislation that would require the president to consult lawmakers before initiating combat […]

Oil and Commodity Prices

After all the recent discussion of oil inventories and other arguments about the price of oil I thought I would throw another set of data and thoughts on the subject. This chart compares the price of oil to the CRB Index of industrial commodity prices — an index of 13 major commodities that does not […]

Construction loans

The Automatic Earth notes an article in the WSJ and says: Scores of banks were already suffering headaches by the end of the first quarter, according to a _newsreview by The Wall Street Journal of FDIC-filed reports by 6,919 banks that make construction loans. The smallest banks, those with total assets of less than $5 […]

Ideology full steam ahead, no questions asked

by rdan The NYT reports: In a speech earlier this year, Christopher Cox, the agency’s chairman, said that working on the transition to international accounting standards and reaching enforcement agreements with foreign countries like the Australians were two of the most important items on his agenda as his term comes to a close. “It is […]

Hello My Name is Robert Waldmann

Hi I am Robert Waldmann. rdan has very kindly invited me to guest post here some. I have a blog of my own (to which he kindly linked in the announcement). I am officially an economist, but tend to blog about politics at my home blog. Here I will try to fit the interest in, […]