The National Retail Federation (NRF), citing tough comparisons, high energy costs and a slowing housing market, is forecasting retail spending to grow 4.7% in 2006, compared to 6.1% in 2005. Facing new economic challenges in 2006, consumers may be forced to find new sources for spending power. The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2006 […]

I am shocked… SHOCKED… to find that the Bush administration is unable to competently manage a federal government program. From today’s NYTimes: With tens of thousands of people unable to get medicines promised by Medicare, the Bush administration has told insurers that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was […]

Apparently, I was not the only one reading this paper by Matthew Higgins, Thomas Klitgaard, and Cédric Tille: Although the United States has seen its net liabilities surge in recent years, its investment income balance has remained positive—largely because U.S. firms operating abroad earn a higher rate of return than do foreign firms operating here. […]

Joshua Marshall has been doing an excellent job of covering the troubles that certain House Republicans have been having with their ethical challenges as well as the race to replace Tom DeLay as Majority leader: The Economic Policy Know-Nothings at the Club for Growth endorse John Shadegg for Majority Leader So let’s turn to the […]

PGL notes that the right-wing talking-point regarding the federal budget deficit – that the deficit is purely the result of out-of-control government spending, and that the deficit can be fixed by curtailing spending – is still being (ahem) liberally used. (Of course, some Bush-backers would argue that deficits don’t matter in the first place, but […]

Some things are almost true by definition. John Tamny has just discovered that inflation is a monetary phenomena. I guess we should at least thank him for this: This is so because the debate about the efficiency of markets versus central planning has been settled, and free markets are now a fact. The happy result […]

We earlier noted how we were awaiting a comment from Brad Setser on the Dark Matter excuse for not worrying about the current account deficit. Brad delivers with a very thorough discussion of the issue – including a transfer pricing explanation for the Net Income from Abroad Puzzle. OK, I’ll admit I just linked to […]

Just days after Kash reviewed the latest garbage from Treasury Secretary Snow, we see this: Driven by the cost of hurricane relief, the federal budget deficit is expected to balloon back above $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends in September, reversing the improvements of 2005, a White House official told reporters yesterday. But […]

This morning the BLS released its estimate of producer price inflation for December: The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods rose 0.9 percent in December, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. This increase followed a 0.7-percent decline in November and a 0.7-percent gain in October. Prices […]

Nouriel Roubini draws our attention to a speech given by Tim Geithner (head of the NY Fed) yesterday. Roubini argues that this speech contained an assessment of the degree to which asset prices should be a factor in the conduct of monetary policy that was subtly but significantly different from the views offered by Greenspan […]