A Picture Worth 1,000 Words Sure, many of you have already seen this picture, or something very much like it. But since I was preparing it for a class anyway, I had it handy and thought you might enjoy seeing it one more time. Plus, long-run context is almost always helpful. Do any features in […]
Roach on Sustainability Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley is still worried about the sustainability of the recovery: This global rebound is unlike any experienced in the past — it has been unusually dependent on policy stimulus. Can this nascent recovery in the world economy wean itself from these life-support measures and make the all-important transition […]
Is the Current Account Deficit Bad? A commenter over the weekend posed this important question, so I thought I’d take a stab at answering it. The Current Account (CA) deficit represents the total borrowing that a country is doing from other countries. As with individuals, if a country as a whole is consuming more than […]
Lockbox Unlocked After visiting Pew’s site, I wandered over to the CBO where I found the latest Monthly Budget Review. It contains the current CBO (-$477b) and OMB ($-527b) deficit projections. One suprising element is that the administration’s forecast (the OMB number) is $50b higher than the basically non-partisan CBO’s estimate. More interesting is this […]
Bush Favorables Plummet; Unfavorables Soar I wandered over to Pew and found their latest survey of registered voters. It’s unambiguously good news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans. Here’s some good news for Democrats: Two-thirds (67%) of those familiar enough with Sen. John Kerry to rate him have a favorable view of him; Sen […]
Trackback I’m not entirely sure what Trackback is or does, but Angry Bear has it now. I think it tracks blogs that link to posts here, but only if the linking bloggers tell it to, somehow. AB
I’m 81% Dixie Via SKB, the “Yankee or Dixie?” Quiz. Based on the words I know and use, my score is: 81% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors? AB
Whither the WMD? One often-heard explanation for why no WMD have been found is that “we were all wrong,” followed by a list of other countries that purportedly agreed with the assessment of some parts of the US intelligence community on the dire nature of the Saddam threat. (The other countries generally make the list […]
Looks Like He’s Running NEW YORK — Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who ran for president in 2000 as a Green Party candidate, will enter the 2004 race for the White House as an independent candidate, advisers told Fox News on Friday. An egotistical footnote. By deciding to run, Nader has guaranteed that that’s how […]
The Irresponsibility Tax What are the costs of Bush’s rampant deficit spending. Dwight M. does some number-crunching and concludes that … if everything goes right and we do not slip back into recession before 2009 and we do not have any other wars, and there are no costs in Iraq or Afghanistan after this year, […]