The following from the winner of the most recent Nobel Prize in economics may surprise many: STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – The U.S. current account and budget deficits, which some analysts see as the cause of the dollar’s depreciation, pose no problems for the world economy, one of the Nobel 2004 economics prize laureates said on Tuesday…”The […]

Via Max Sawicky whose latest includes lots of links to economists who might support social cecurity privatization including this contribution from David Altig. As I read David’s very sensible comments, I could not help notice how his honest analysis contradicts much of what Senator Bill Frist said on this show during his Sunday interview. Alas, […]

My Thursday channel-surfing led me to make the mistake of listening to the latest outsourcing tirade from Lou Dobbs and crew: LOUISE SCHIAVONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Add pharmaceuticals to the long list of products increasingly manufactured overseas and sold to U.S. consumers. ALAN TOMELSON, U.S. BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY COUNCIL: U.S.-based pharmaceutical producers have been steadily losing […]

Hmm, someone has taken my post-election suggestions (also, here and here) to heart, though not perhaps in the way I had envisioned: Proposal Would Hit Blue State Taxpayers … Some conservative activists are urging the Bush administration to scrap the federal deduction for state and local taxes as part of a broader plan to revamp […]

My expectations are never sufficiently low: Lobbying Prohibitions Eased For Former Top Officials The timing was perfect: On Nov. 23 — exactly three weeks after the election and as a flurry of top Bush administration officials announced their departures — the Office of Government Ethics declared that it was relaxing prohibitions on lobbying by former […]

Kash comes through again with the monthly BLS report on employment. As I was reading it, CNN was interviewing Mr. Friedman. Noticing the big pop in the Household Survey number, I was expecting him to pull the usual Snow job where the allegedly more reliable series (Household v. Payroll) was the one that showed the […]

A very interesting paper: Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, “The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence from US Cities.” What are the economic consequences to U.S. natives of the growing diversity of American cities? Is their productivity or utility affected by cultural diversity as measured by diversity of countries of birth of U.S. residents? We […]

The November employment figures were released by the BLS this morning. It shows surprisingly weak growth in the labor market: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 112,000 in November to 132.1 million, seasonally adjusted. This followed a much larger increase of 303,000 in October. In November, employment rose in health care and social assistance, leisure […]

Reader Steve writes in with a good question about Greenspan’s 3-Card Monte: Love your site and have been following the various articles about Social Security. Admittedly, my understanding of the system is very raw as is probably the case with most people who are not economists. My question is therefore very basic. How does the […]

Many of us (see for example Brad DeLong) have been wondering for some time why the bond market does not seem to be reflecting expectations of a dollar depreciation into its prices. Shouldn’t investors be demanding higher interest rates to compensate them for the exchange rate risk that they’re taking on by holding dollars? Yet […]