Dr. Chinn begins his post by quoting the President’s year-end list of accomplishments: The Economy Is Growing And Creating Jobs. Since May 2003, the economy has added nearly 4.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate is down to 5 percent – lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Last quarter, the economy […]
Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times argues that it can and it should: “There is a general agreement about the fact that citizenship in this country should not be bestowed on people who are the children of folks who come into this country illegally,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, who is participating in the […]
Via BubbleMeter, this graph of the value of GDP and the total value of all housing (the creator of the graph titled it “THIS IS THE HOUSING BUBBLE”): It’s hard to see how population growth or shifts in other economic fundamentals explain why the value of housing should now be over 1.5 times the value […]
One of the joys of blogging is that one occasionally gets interesting emails from AB readers such as this one: When a US based manufacturer (Caterpillar jumps to mind) makes products in Brazil and sells them in Europe, would that count as an export? What about a Toyota Camry manufactured in Ohio? Is that an […]
My only request to Santa this year was for us to see an intelligent discussion of the Social Security issue on Meet the Press. When Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel decided to grace the show yesterday morning, I had thought for a moment that Santa had granted my wish: MR. RUSSERT: Is there a story […]
A recent Washington Monthly profile of Kos stirred a debate over the merits of, well, the bulk of what we do here at Angry Bear. Atrios writes that facts, charts, and the like are to some extent pointless in the current environment: I’ve said this before, but there’s just little point in detail-oriented grand policy […]
I am happy to report that the National Review is not shying away from saying Merry Christmas as they tout what they call the “Best of NRO Financial 2005”. Of course, we have had some real fun with a few of their silly op-eds such as John Tamny lecturing Paul Volcker about trade deficits. Then […]
The IRS Quarterly Statistics of Income Report has hundreds of pages of new numbers, but one well respected tax publication provides this summary: The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts shrunk individual income tax revenues in 2003 despite a rise in taxable income and forced over 400,000 new taxpayers onto the rolls of the alternative minimum […]
Yesterday’s budget-cutting action by the Senate highlights the major problem faced by those who want to cut government spending: it is deeply unpopular to do so. The ‘starve the beast’ notion that cutting taxes leads to large deficits, which in turn forces spending cuts, has already been completely and repeatedly debunked. But the difficulty with […]
The Carpetbagger, Kevin Drum, and Brad DeLong are hammering Snow for this statement: President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a federal budget surplus of $127 billion. President George Bush ran a deficit of $319 billion in 2005. So who deserves more credit for fighting red ink? No question, says Treasury Secretary John Snow: […]