Mark Kleiman reads David Brooks and explodes: David, it’s not a matter of “not fully coherent” or lack of an “unorthodox management style”: its that every single thing his administration has turned its hand to, except lying to win elections, it’s trashed! Bush and his people suck at vision, suck at making reasonable plans, suck […]

Mark Thoma’s Snow Falls Silent in China links to an interesting article from Edmund Andrews. As John Tamny steals Mark’s title (“Snows Falls on China”), he writes: A frequently cited anecdote about England’s economic decline in the ’70s is the irony of countless Rolls Royces moving through the streets of London. At the time, savings […]

The Office of Special Counsel has its own website. Dan Froomkin discusses the implications.

In this week’s issue The Economist wonders to what degree one country’s rate of inflation is no longer determined by local forces, and instead is determined by global economic forces: With energy and labour becoming conspicuously dearer, any inflation model based on a mark-up of prices over costs should be flashing red. Yet in the […]

One of my complaints about our replacement governor in California is that he loves to talk about deficit reduction but is unwilling to raise taxes and incapable of significantly reducing spending – although the slate of propositions he has put on the ballot are designed to reduce our investment in public education and to reduce […]

I don’t know if Gov. Vilsack has taken any courses in economics, but Thomas Nugent is attacking a “Vilsack Manifesto” that looks like it was co-authored by John Kasich (a conservative Republican). Nugent scoffs at the following proposals: (1) declare war on pork; (2) end corporate welfare; (3) cut oil and gas subsidies; and (4) […]

Howard Fineman writes about the “Conservative Crackup”: President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own – a political one: Blame the Administration. Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched […]

The headline inflation numbers in the estimates of consumer and producer price inflation during September were pretty spectacular; in fact, yesterday’s PPI report showed a one-month increase in producer prices that was the highest in 31 years. But most of the inflation indicated by these headline numbers was caused by one thing alone: sharply higher […]

Jerry Bowyer of NRO Fuzzcharts fame found something interesting: President Bush’s economic policies have created an environment that is highly conducive to the prosperity of racial minorities. BuzzCharts knows this assertion might shock some people, even those who are supporters of President George W. Bush. The Bush administration clearly is better at helping African Americans […]

It appears that the President’s commission studying fundamental tax reform is nearing its final recommendations. From the NYTimes: WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 – President Bush’s tax advisory commission agreed today to recommend two alternative tax plans, both of which would limit or eliminate almost all tax deductions, including the ones for state and local income and […]