While I fundamentally disagree with the premise of the following short piece from the AEI, its title is just too funny to pass up: Congressional Republicans Make French Socialists Look Like Ronald Reagan As was the case during the Reagan years, the culture of spending has prevailed over the Republican promises to control spending and […]
Daniel Gross, Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong hammer Mr. Hubbard for apparently not knowing that Federal debt stands at $8.1 trillion. His overall performance was much worse than that: Actually, again, I don’t know what numbers you’re using, but the current budget debt is not a problem, but we do not want it to grow as […]
I’m preparing a few slides for a class discussion about the US federal budget. In so doing, I produced the following picture of federal revenues and spending, excluding the Social Security trust fund. Even I, someone extremely familiar with the details of the US’s budget problems, was slightly astonished by this picture. Note: The projection […]
Jonah Goldberg reads another story noting that Karl Rove may have been in more legal jeopady that Jonah has been assuming. Jonah protests that he now neither understands or cares much about this issue. But really – when has he ever grasped the issues or cared about the outing of a CIA agent? If he […]
President Bush says yes: Bush said November’s strong job growth was due to what he said was a policy of cutting taxes and restraining spending and pledged to continue with that strategy. Restraining spending? I thought the rightwing talking points were supposed to blame the deficit on an explosion in government spending as tax cuts […]
The November Employment Situation Summary can be found here with the headline news being that payroll employment grew by 215,000, while the unemployment rate remained at 5.0%. Interestingly, the household survey suggests employment fell by 52,000 resulting in a decline in the employment to population ratio from 62.9% to 62.8%, while the reported labor force […]
During Katie Couric’s interview with Mary Matalin, I learned three things. The main focus of Matalin’s comments was an attack on those “partisan Democrats and reporters” who dare criticize President Bush’s Iraq policies. Lesson 1: Matalin has an exclusive right to be a partisan. At one point in her tirade against Democrats such as Senator […]
Steve Teles provides a link to this study on the real price of a higher education in the U.S. The study distinguishes between the type of institution. For a public four-year college: At public 4-year institutions, the median price of attendance increased from $10,230 in 1999–2000 to $11,187 in 2001–02 (figure C). The median value […]
The quarterly estimate of housing prices around the country was released this morning by OFHEO. From their press release: WASHINGTON, D.C. – Average U.S. home prices increased 12.02 percent year over year from the third quarter of 2004 through the third quarter of 2005. This represents a two percentage point decline from the previous four-quarter […]
While the recent news about real GDP growth has been pretty good, Lawrence Kudlow overstates the case again: If former President Clinton had overseen this economy, he’d have held daily Rose Garden news conferences to mark the occasion … Real GDP has grown at 3 percent or better for ten straight quarters, averaging 4.1 percent […]