Inspired by a question from PGL about whether the US still has a comparative advantage in agricultural products, I have put together another trade-related table. The table provides a simple measure of where the US’s comparative advantages and disadvantages lie. (Note: for a list of items in each end-use category, see this document.) For each […]
This morning’s release of the trade data for March by the BEA showed a bit of a narrowing of the trade deficit on goods and services, from $60.6 bn in February down to $55.0 bn in March. This was due to slightly higher exports and a surprising drop in US imports. At this point let […]
Jason Furman analyzes the impact of the Pozen plan as well as the Pozen plus privatization plan on solvency in various ways. As far as long-run solvency defined in terms of the size of the 75-year shortfall, the former closes only 60% of it and the latter closes only 30% of it. In terms of […]
I pity Stephen Moore as the victim of poor timing. A Federal Appeals Court just gave Dick Cheney a victory in his coverup regarding the 2001 energy task force. The State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee no on the Bolton documents request. And the National Review decides to today is the day to […]
Many thanks to William Polley for a thoughtful post on the employment-population ratio. He follows up on my critique of the unemployment ratio – where its decline over the past couple of years is a combination of a weak recovery in employment relative to adult population and a fall in the civilian labor force participation […]
When interviewing Mary Matalin, Tim Russert should invite someone other than her husband to stand in for the Democrats. Nothing against James Carville, but when Mary says things that are simply not true: MS. MATALIN: There is nowhere in our history, once – Abe Fortas -who did not have majority – a legislative filibuster used […]
The Usual Suspects are lining up to push the third plank of the Bush Social Security propaganda. On one hand, the Usual Suspects tell us that the Pozen plan only slows the rate of growth of benefits. On the other hand, only the wealthy will sacrifice so the poor can have more. So when Paul […]
UPDATE: Forbes reported today that UK housing prices are up ” 0.31 pct from the previous quarter”. That is a slight decline in real terms. However the “volume of sales decreased by 34.77 pct”. That is exactly how a housing bust usually works: “Housing “bubbles” typically do not “pop”, rather prices tend to deflate slowly […]
Jacob Weisberg has an interesting discussion of how the GOP has failed to live up to its 1995 promise to downsize the Federal government. He points to a Cato paper documenting that inflation-adjusted spending for the 101 largest programs that the Republicans proposed to eliminate as unnecessary in 1995 has risen by 27%. Cato should […]
Stephen Moore will join The Wall Street Journal as its senior economics writer. While Kevin Drum calls this a move to lower their collective intelligence, Max Sawicky suggests this move may actually increase the already low standards of the editorial page of what otherwise is a very good newspaper. Since the problem with the editorial […]