Here’s Bob Somerby, unfortunately only describing (as opposed to either transcribing what was said, or saying it himself on NPR or CNN) what a talking head or expert should say when confronted by the “worthless IOUs” claim: RECOMMENDED ANSWER [to the “worthless IOU/How can the government repay the trust fund” sophistry]: Easy! Almost surely, the […]
Paul Krugman writes in his latest New York Times oped: To get a 6.5 percent rate of return, you need capital gains: if dividends yield 3 percent, stock prices have to rise 3.5 percent per year after inflation. That doesn’t sound too unreasonable if you’re thinking only a few years ahead. But privatizers need that […]
First the CBO tells us that Social Security Trust Fund reserves will continue growing after 2018 and now the GAO writes that today’s fiscal policy is unsustainable. Just as the President leaves town to promote his Social Security plans, these analysts commit unforgivable acts (as in telling the public the truth).
How big will the US’s current account (CA) deficit be in 2005? The best forecasts of the CA deficit for 2005 are in the neighborhood of $750-$800bn. That would be roughly consistent with the pace that the US ran during the end of 2004. But because of an interesting paradox that exists about the 2005 […]
In a piece in the next issue of The Economist, Brad Setser nicely explains the risks of a potential yuan revaluation against the dollar: According to Brad Setser, a former Treasury official now at the University of Oxford, a dearer yuan would have a more significant effect on capital flows. At the moment, foreign capital […]
Via Joshua Marshall provides a link to the GOP’s weekend retreat reading material. There is a lot of misleading nonsense in this document, so it may attract a lot of rebuttal comments from various blogging economists, but there is a set of claims in the very opening summary , which I’d like to focus on. […]
James N. Morgan is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Michigan and served on advisory committees to the Social Security Administration from 1966-69. The Ann Arbor News interviewed Dr. Morgan this weekend. Highlights include: Q. What do you think is the most important thing for people to know during the upcoming debate over […]
David John and William Beach take the low road in their attempt to justify the claim that Social Security hurts blacks by asking us to believe that Beach and Gareth Davis fully answered their critics back in 1998. Rather getting into the name-calling over this issue, let me suggest that an unbiased estimate of the […]
Nominations for two categories are up now: best series and best post (parts 1, 2, and 3). The latter category even includes two posts by yours truly. AB UPDATE: Best Series link fixed.
As it turns out, there is no problem with Social Security, not even a small one. Quiddity explains. AB