Greenspan’s remarks about a possible renminbi revaluation also make me wonder exactly what the Fed would do if and when China does revalue. Mark Thoma and David Altig (among others) have had some interesting things to say about this question recently. I want to do a more in-depth treatment if these issues in the future, […]

I’ve broken this into two posts, since it was getting rather lengthy. First, let me point out some interesting remarks by Alan Greenspan yesterday. He was, at least to me, surprisingly blunt: Fixing the renminbi to the dollar is beginning to significantly work to the detriment of Chinese economy. I think there is no question […]

In Part I of this series, I examined spending on healthcare across industrialized nations from 1970 to the present. Throughout the 1970s the U.S. spent a bit more about 2 percent of GDP more on healthcare than other industrialized nations. Then, around 1980, the share of GDP spent on healthcare surged dramatically in the U.S., […]

The devil is in the details is an old Ross Perot line and it seems Richard Pombo has a more colorful of expressing this point in reference to John Doolittle’s advocacy for promoting hydrogen fuels. Doolittle and Pombo are both Republicans from California. For a defense of subsidizing hydrogen fuels, see this op-ed by Robert […]

Michael Boskin makes his case for Bush’s Social Security deform, while Max Sawicky provides the critique. Max briefly touched on two aspects of Michael’s paper that relate to utility theory. Michael tried to argue that the income elasticity for government benefits (G) is less than unity: Economists use a term called the diminishing marginal utility […]

President Bush tried to explain the need for the Republican energy proposal: WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Wednesday pushed Congress to pass a long-stalled energy bill before its summer recess, but acknowledged there is nothing he can do to ease rising gas prices in the short-term. “I wish I could simply wave a magic […]

I normally don’t read Ms. Quinn but the Cato critique made me take a look. Ms. Quinn’s premise is: What’s more, you’ll be getting a double cut in Social Security benefits—a fact that the White House hasn’t exactly advertised. Investment returns from private accounts can potentially make up for one of the cuts, but they’re […]

Via CalculatedRisk comes the latest from Bruce Bartlett. Bruce is not predicting a recession but he is concerned that our monetary policy is becoming too tight. While I agree with his concern, I don’t agree with Bruce’s analogy to the FED tightening during 1999-2000 for two reasons. One is simply that labor markets were tight […]

Today’s Consumer Price Index report came in a bit higher than expected: On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI-U rose 0.6 percent in March, following an increase of 0.4 percent in February. Energy costs advanced sharply for the second consecutive month–up 4.0 percent in March… The index for all items less food and energy, which […]

As Brad was having fun with President Bush’s confusion in Ohio (“Risk, Return, Confusion”) he reasoned: Okay, so currently every working man and woman puts his or her savings in some combination of Social Security/the bank/the stock market/etc. These investments have total risk X and expected return Y. Now anyone who thinks Y is too […]