The BEA reported on the US’s current account deficit for 2004. And the winner is… $666 billion, or 5.7% of GDP: The U.S. current-account deficit–the combined balances on trade in goods and services, income, and net unilateral current transfers–increased to $665.9 billion in 2004 from $530.7 billion in 2003. An increase in the deficit on […]

Last week, I plugged a paper on Social Security by a professor at the University of Oregon, Mark Thoma. As it turns out, he also has a blog — take a look. And while I’m plugging economists’ blogs, see also Calculated Risk, which may be a bit to the right of Angry Bear, but is […]

Halliburton: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Military auditors still have “major” unresolved issues with Halliburton, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, a day after Democratic congressmen released an audit questioning $108 million in costs by the contractor. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the audit, which found $108 million in questionable fuel delivery costs in Iraq by Halliburton unit Kellogg […]

I have tried to stay away from the term “garbage” in reference to Dr. Greenspan but today’s (Ides of March) Senate hackery went way too far: At present, the Social Security trustees estimate the unfunded liability over the indefinite future to be $10.4 trillion. The shortfall in Medicare is calculated at several multiples of the […]

As I suggested earlier, Greenspan is spouting more garbage when he claims that his support for the Bush tax cuts was justified given the projections of the budget surplus at the time. Greenspan’s deliberate implication is that the US’s budget deficits are the result of bad budgetary forecasts, not the tax cuts. That is simply […]

I finally read something from Stephen Moore worth quoting: As former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacoca once declared, any CEO who tried this with a private firm’s pension fund would be thrown in jail. Of course, this was Lee Iacoca’s line and Stephen does not really go after his accomplice in their Soc. Sec. scam. But […]

No, Mr. Chairman. We were not all wrong: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) sparred today at a congressional hearing over whether Greenspan deserves some blame for helping to create the federal budget deficits that he regularly deplores. Greenspan said today, “we were all wrong,” in early 2001 when government […]

David Malpass opens his NRO oped by noting Alan Greenspan’s “warnings on the deficit situation”, but then writes: In a good turn of events, however, the recently passed House and Senate budget resolutions include reconciliation instructions requesting tax-cut legislation in 2005 … Indeed, a joint House and Senate budget that includes tax-cut funding would be […]

Jack Snow’s annouces a government web site of the usual distortions. But could someone explain this line from our Treasury Secretary: So if someone promises you a 75-year fix, I encourage you to read the fine print. In 1983 we were promised a ‘75-year fix’ – but 2 years later, the system was headed out […]

Keep up the good work, PGL: Support for Bush on Social Security Wanes, Poll Finds Barely a third of the public approves of the way President Bush is dealing with Social Security and a majority says the more they hear about Bush’s plan to reform the giant retirement system, the less they like it, according […]