It’s a bit frightening that a policy change in South Korea, whose dollar denominated assets surely pale in comparison to China and Japan’s, can cause this (WSJ, subscription required): NEW YORK — The dollar plunged, posting its largest one-day loss versus the euro since August and dropping to a seven-year low versus the South Korean […]

I’m for free trade, outsourcing, and free mobility of factors of productions – especially labor – as many conservative and liberal economists are. Angrybear reader JackNYC provides us with another reason to lower barriers to international labor mobility. To be fair, however, higher labor force growth would be yet another reason to reverse the Bush […]

Max Sawicky has been documenting how some employees of the Social Security Administration are assisting George W. Bush in his attempt to destroy the program. Max links to the presentation from James B. Lockart III. Let’s take a look at this chart starting with its “earth is flat” slide #7, which is preceded by its […]

Some interesting developments in the foreign exchange markets in the last couple of days, according to the Financial Times: The US dollar was sharply lower on Tuesday after South Korea re-ignited fears that central banks plan to diversify their foreign exchange reserves away from the greenback to include more currencies. The Bank of Korea said […]

Eric Chaney and Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley pose this question: Why haven’t oil prices fallen more in recent months? Most forecasts made late in 2004 for oil prices had them falling in 2005 — Morgan Stanley’s forecast was for an average price of around $37/bbl — and yet they have remained stubbornly high, with […]

For an interesting comment on my recent dialogue with David Altig over Charles Krauthammer’s view that the Social Security Trust Fund’s assets are worthless piece of paper, see William Polley’s What Does It Mean to Default. Among the many very sensible passages is this one: If the Fed is really independent, it can honor its […]

If there are Federal Reserve notes in your wallet, I’ll gladly buy you a cup of coffee if you give them to me. And why would he make this deal? Check this out: 2042 is the fictional date for the fictional bankruptcy of a fictional trust fund. Let’s start with basics. The Social Security system […]

Via Jesse Taylor, comes the latest from Arnold Kling. Jesse gave Arnold’s ranting a nice reply, but one little empirical matter here. Arnold seems to think the rich have a high marginal propensity to save. But Glenn Hubbard, Bush’s first CEA chair, often wrote that the rich have a high marginal propensity to consume. What […]

Ramesh Ponnuru gets this right: The payroll tax currently applies only to the first $90,000 of wages. If you make more than that, payroll taxes are not taken out of your additional wages. Bush was asked whether he would support raising that “cap” on payroll taxes. His answer: “The only thing I’m not opened-minded about […]

Krugman leaves absolutely no room for doubt about what he thinks of Alan Greenspan: A disturbing thing about Wednesday’s hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging […]