Productivity Up Productivity Output continues to soar, which is definitely a good thing in the long run, but in the near term will serve to keep the labor market soft: Output, not productivity, increased in May. In fact, the growth in hours worked in manufacturing exceeded the growth in output, meaning that productivity fell a […]

New CPI Data The figures for consumer prices in May have just been released by the BLS. They show a predictably large 0.6% increase in consumer prices thanks to the rise in the price of oil, but just a moderate 0.2% rise in the core rate (excluding energy and food). What does this mean? While […]

Medicare Drug Benefit Bush is on the road today selling his version of a senior drug benefit – the needlessly complex and poorly run Medicare drug card program. One thing that I bet Bush will not address, however, is why his Medicare drug benefit legislation forbade the importation of cheaper drugs from other countries. Bush […]

Cynicism Without Bound Kevin Drum sees the thread that I didn’t. It’s common knowledge that there’s been a lot of pressure — both from within and without — on the American Catholic Church to deny communion to pro-choice politicians (you should now say “John Kerry” in your best Subliminal Man voice.) Until now, I simply […]

Update on Abu Ghraib DHinMI on Daily Kos has a good roundup of recent developments in the Abu Ghraib investigation. The punch line: as many of us predicted from the beginning, more and more evidence is emerging that the torture methods used in the prison were approved at the very highest levels of the military […]

Not That They Wanted to See it Anyway … … but Teens banned from Moore film: THE US film ratings board has ruled Michael Moore’s controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 film cannot be viewed by people under 17 unless they are accompanied by an adult, sparking an immediate appeal from the distributors. … The Motion Picture Association […]

More Grownups Speaking Out Following up on the previous post by Kash, I see that Dan Drezner has some semi-inside information from the Council on Foreign Relations National Meeting. In short, none of the grownups — at least none not currently part of the administration or the RNC — seem happy: Those on the liberal […]

Some of the Grownups Speak Out Brad DeLong has repeatedly asked in dismay “where are the grownups in the Republican party?” Well, today’s Washington Post is reporting that a group of grownup Republicans and Democrats will be speaking out this week against the Bush administration’s handling of foreign policy: Angered by President Bush’s conduct of […]

New Data on Outsourcing The BLS released new estimates this week of the number of jobs lost in the US to outsourcing. The BLS data lends support to an argument that I have made here before: outsourcing has not been a major source of the weak US labor market. Note that the BLS data is […]

The Reagan is Full Tonight Given Reagan’s status as “the greatest leader of the free world in the 20th Century,” I think this suggestion from physicist Robert Park’s latest newsletter is a great idea: THE REAGAN LEGACY: AN EPONYMOUS EPIDEMIC GRIPS WASHINGTON. The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is dedicated to making sure that Americans are […]