This story from the front page of today’s Washington Post is interesting: Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by […]

It’s time to check in with this week’s new data on prices. This morning the BLS released the October data for the consumer price index. The data showed a small-ish increase in the overall rate of inflation in October, and a very slight rise in the core rate of inflation. Yesterday the BLS provided its […]

The Associated Press reports: WASHINGTON – Federal health officials didn’t follow normal procedures in rejecting over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill — and some documents suggest the decision was made even before scientists finished reviewing the evidence, congressional investigators reported Monday. Politics trumped science, immediately charged long-suspicious members of Congress who had requested the independent […]

Tim Russert opened Meet the Press quoting President Bush: It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. And then Ken Mehlman proceeded to do just that. Josh Marshall notes that Mehlman now has “twice the lying power” and Crooks and Liars provides us with the videotape. It would seem that […]

Greenspan gave a speech earlier today in which he talked about the US current account deficit. Shorter Greenspan: The ability of the US to keep running a huge and growing CA deficit is the result of a decrease in home bias. In other words, investors around the world are more willing to stash their savings […]

In The Economist, Buttonwood asks: “The air is coming out of America’s property-price bubble. Will it pop or go quietly?”. “Mortgage applications were down by about 5% in October compared with September, and were lower than the same month a year earlier. The stock of unsold new houses is rising. The only bullish sign is […]

When I endorsed taxing some of the economic rent earned by owners of oil fields, David Altig took notice and our debate continued: It was certainly not my intention to associate pgl with either price controls or “the tax gouging spinmeisters,” which I probably did by combining commentary on the tax issue with commentary related […]

Thanks to everyone for the great comments on my (albeit reluctantly offered) “Notes on Trade” post. I thought I should take the time to try to answer some questions and address some concerns that came up. My response ran too long to be practically included in the comments, so I thought I’d put them up […]

The Washington Post is not a perfect newspaper. Along with most major newspapers in this country, it has been guilty of uncritically reporting the administration’s garbage many times over the past 5 years, particularly when it comes to the administration’s fiscal train wreck. But increasingly, the Post is willing to examine the administration’s statements for […]

David Altig cites the Tax Foundation for “evidence” that a windfall profits tax will gather little additional revenue. David writes: The shortfall from projected revenues in that picture had a lot to do with missed projections on energy prices. But did the tax on U.S. providers of oil cause Russian and OPEC to start supplying […]