The conference committee working on a bill to extend the expiring tax cuts has reached an agreement. The Congress looks set to vote on it over the next few days. The biggest elements of the deal include keeping the $1000 child tax credit for five more years; keeping the 10% tax bracket for six years; […]
Dan Froomkin comes up with a beauty in his column today: In a soaring, eloquent, upbeat speech from the marble podium at the United Nations, President Bush yesterday put forth the purest distillation yet of his foreign policy views. And depending on your own world view, I’m betting you either loved it or hated it. […]
Yesterday Greenspan raised short-term interest rates by 0.25%. He essentially gave a two-part justification for this move. First, the Fed announcement said that the economy is still doing pretty well: “Output growth appears to have regained some traction, and labor market conditions have improved modestly.” Second, the announcement argued that even with this increase in […]
The National Association of Colleges and Employers released its report on starting salaries, by major, of new college graduates last week. Who’s doing well? Many business disciplines saw increases in starting salaries. For example, business administration graduates received a 6.2 percent increase, for an average starting salary of $38,254. Management information systems graduates’ average starting […]
So it turns out that the CBS memos are almost surely fake (yes, I’ve been away from the news for a while.) The Boston Globe, which originally reported the “Missing Year” story in May of 2000. Today, the Globe puts the fake memo story in context: The Globe’s Spotlight Team has painstakingly documented the preferential […]
The Fed has just announced their decision to raise short-term interest rates by 0.25%. From their statement: The Committee believes that, even after this action, the stance of monetary policy remains accommodative and, coupled with robust underlying growth in productivity, is providing ongoing support to economic activity. After moderating earlier this year partly in response […]
Joseph Stiglitz is editor of The Economists’ Voice and has this article in its inaugural edition. He notes that long-term fiscal stimulus crowds out investment – a theme he also dubs Rubinomics. He further notes that the Bush tax cuts have provided little short-term stimulus for reasons similar to what Kash noted. Stiglitz also noted […]
Gwen Ifill hosts a discussion between Robert Barro and Robert Reich, which began with a discussion of real GDP and the labor market. Barro opens with: The economy has been doing quite well of late, particularly the GDP growth has been over 4 percent since early in 2003. Investments grown strongly, productivity has grown strongly. […]
We heard three very different positions on Iraq from the Republicans this weekend. Let me start with the grown-up GOP position expressed by Sen. Lindsey Graham on Late Edition SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Well, I’ve been to Iraq twice, and the one thing I constantly hear is that we have enough troops. But […]
John Kerry today: “[T]oday, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?” “Is he really saying to Americans that if we had known there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have […]