Intended and Actual Spending Kash, Brad, and I have been hamering Bush’s “15% discretionary spending growth” lie pretty hard. Now even the conservative/libertarians are getting in on the game. Posting on the subject, Jacob Levy at the Volkh Conspiracy writes this rather damning paragraph: Authorization is not spending. A question about whether one is spending […]

The CEA’s Forecast Record If you’re a regular visitor to this or Brad DeLong’s site, you probably know all about the White House’s unlikely forecast for job creation that was released this week. To put it in context, I thought it might be helpful to compare this year’s forecast of job creation by the White […]

Josh Marshall I have to quote this one in full: Given the president’s record as a businessman, and since he’s now run the country hopelessly into debt, isn’t it about time he sells the country off to some rich friends who will swallow the loss so he can move on to greener pastures? Now that’s […]

How Long Will This Keep Going On? What I’m referring to, of course, is the seemingly endless purchases of US dollars by Japan. (Isn’t that the first thing that came to your head?) This week’s Buttonwood column in The Economist elaborates on the point that I made yesterday about the self-contradictory G-7 communiqué regarding currency […]

The Press Picks Up On the White House Jobs ‘Forecast’ From CBSMarketwatch.com: Fuzzy Math: Bush plan would need up to 5mln jobs Report’s call for 2.6 mln doesn’t add up The U.S. economy would need to add between 3.6 million and 5 million jobs between now and the end of the year to meet the […]

Weapons of Math Destruction, Part III CORRECTION: Brad re-ran the numbers and finds that the actual necessary job growth is 320,000/month, not 470,000. That’s still an impossible target: it’s been reached in only 18 of the 119 months between Feb. 1994 and Dec. 2003. Brad DeLong catches another one: Table 3-1 of the 2004 The […]

Weapons of Math Destruction, Part II Calpundit, Angry Bear, and Joshua Claybourn have all had things to say about the issue that I addressed in my “Lies, Direct from the President’s Mouth” post of yesterday. Several people have offered up theories to explain the President’s incorrect statement, most of which revolve around the idea that […]

A Self-Contradictory G-7 Statement Finance ministers from the G-7 countries met over the weekend. As is customary at the end of such meetings, they issued a joint statement yesterday containing their thinking about the state of the world economy – and specifically addressed exchange rate movements. The statement was a compromise, and thus somewhat confused […]

Budget Update: Weapons of Math Destruction(+) CalPundit has an explanation, of sorts, for Bush’s untrue statement about discretionary spending: [referring to a chart in Bush’s budget titled “Percent Change in Discretionary Budget Authority] … discretionary spending outside of defense and homeland security went up 15% in 2001. Or rather, that discretionary spending authority — not […]

The Soft Bigotry of Lowered Expectations The reviews are in, and with the notable exception of Juan Cole, almost nobody — conservatives included — agrees with my take. And that’s a good thing. Rooting for Bush’s Iraq policy or economic policy to go poorly is one thing (i.e., I’m against doing that), but rooting for […]