The insanity continues. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reports: “Interest-only loans financed nearly 70 percent of the home purchases in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties during the first two months of this year …” The article concludes with quotes from two economists with opposing views of the growing use of IO loans. First, […]

… about their Social Security money. Via Brad DeLong, Daniel Froomkin notes that President Bush is Exploiting a Misconception. Congressman Kendrick Meek tells young voters the truth: MIAMI, Florida (AP) — Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Florida, appealed to young taxpayers Saturday to oppose President Bush’s plan to partially privatize Social Security, saying they had to the […]

Time for another installment in an irregular series. I thought this email said a lot about the media’s truly poor job in covering the privatization debate: In regards to Bush’s privorization plan for Social Security, I caught the tail end of a speech that a U.S. Senator was giving in Congress. He stated that contrary […]

A liberal suggestion comes from the National Review: They should, rather, pass the legislation with the confidence that parents of small children are capable of seeing that even if they don’t pay income taxes now, they very well may pay them later. As soon as Mr. Ponnuru also puts on the table who will pay […]

Let me add a few more provocative thoughts about “globalization” today. Again, this is partly in response to the public radio series on the subject, which has made me a bit cranky about it. But first, let me change the terminology somewhat. In the course that I teach on the subject every year, “globalization” is […]

This story, in today’s NYT must somehow be the fault of Newsweek: Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him. The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 […]

When Senator Frist brought up the nomination of Priscilla Owen, Senator Kennedy asked if this was the same Priscilla Owen that Attorney General Gonzales had accused of judicial activism. When Mark Thoma critiqued this NRO op-ed written by Donald Luskin: On Monday, Florida congressman Robert Wexler broke ranks with fellow Democrats by offering a plan […]

It’s a simple question, but I think that the answer may be less obvious than one might think. “Globalization” doesn’t simply mean more international trade. It doesn’t simply mean traveling more, or having better international internet connections. It doesn’t simply mean having more cross-border investment flows. Rather, it is some amalgam or all of these […]

The US government has, for the second time in a week, said that it is going to put government restrictions on the ability of US residents to buy goods from whomever they want: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The Bush administration will impose quotas on four more categories of Chinese textile imports because they threaten to disrupt […]

Even Blogs for Bush had been ignoring what we reported here. The Cato Institute and Le Club for Rich People have received limited notice from the rightwing blogs for their list of 450 people who support some version of privatization. While it is true that they list five Noble Prize winners, they also list more […]