Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Santorum Exposes His Own Dishonesty

My only opinion about the Terri Schiavo issue is that this is a private matter so the politicians have no right to intervene. With that said, I have to admire the discussions from Aaron Brown. Aaron interviewed Rick Santorum last night and the Senator proved over and over how dishonest he can be. First of […]

Bush’s Backdoor Employment Tax Increase: Does Kevin Hasset Agree with Me?

Via Jesse Taylor comes Kevin Hasset: To what extent are Social Security taxes really “taxes” in the traditional sense? Do the lines in the sand make sense? The question is not as odd or revolutionary as it may sound, and the answer has a significant impact on all sorts of debates. For example, opponents of […]

Hard versus Soft Landing

Nouriel Roubini and David Altig debate the likelihood of a hard versus soft landing for the US’s financial imbalances in today’s WSJ econoblog. For those who aren’t familiar with the arguments, let me try to boil them down a bit. I think that Roubini’s hard landing scenario can be summarized as this: The US current […]

Look Who is Attacking Lindsey Graham

I have never been a fan of Lindsey Graham but the enemy of my enemy – well you know the drill. Graham once endorse the same kind of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ plan for privatization that James DeMint is pushing. But now that he is uttering the suggestion of tax rate increases, DeMint […]

If Jack Snow is Right – Soc. Sec. is Solvent

The big news from this Bloomberg story is captured by its title: Stock-Market Returns May Not Meet Bush’s Social Security Hopes But when other economists noted slower long-term growth would suggest lower stock returns, the Treas. Sec. suggested we would still have strong long-term growth: Treasury’s Snow says high stock-market returns will be possible because […]

Housing: Speculation and the Price-Rent Ratio

Mr. Magoo sees bubbles too! Just last month, in testimony to Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan opined on housing: “I think we’re running into certain problems in certain localized areas.” Considering he never saw the Nasdaq bubble, the housing bubble must be enormous. And localized? According to an FDIC report released in February, the housing […]

Two Conservative Economists Question Privatization of Social Security

Angrybear readers know I often cite Robert Barro’s Economic Viewpoint: Business Week: July 3, 2000. Barro challenges the free lunch claims often cited by supporters of privatization. Tyler Cowen has made some excellent contributions to this debate and now he suggests we read Robert Barro’s latest.