Three-Card Monte Following up on Kash’s earlier post about Greenspan, Krugman’s op/ed also highlights a fairly bold bait and switch maneuver by Greenspan: The payroll tax is regressive: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income families than it does on the rich. In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, families near the […]

When Will China Overheat? Today Greenspan (not my favorite person these days – see the preceding post – but anyway…) made some remarks about China: WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) — China could be forced to limit its dollar purchases to avoid excessive economic growth, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Tuesday. “China’s central bank purchases of […]

Krugman on Greenspan’s Remarks In today’s NYTimes column, Paul Krugman has some things to say about Greenspan’s shockingly partisan testimony on Capitol Hill last week. The most interesting parts of his column are the three conclusions that Krugman draws: First, “starving the beast” is no longer a hypothetical scenario — it’s happening as we speak. […]

Haiti I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but it’s definitely weird: Spokesman Scott McClellan said the allegations have no basis. “It’s complete nonsense!” He said Mr. Aristide was not abducted or kidnapped and consulted with the U.S. Embassy in Haiti on the best way to give up power and get out of […]

Electronic Voting: I’d Like a Receipt, Please I’m not much of a conspiracy nut. When I hear that the CEO of Diebold, the leading maker of electronic voting machines, said last summer that he’s “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,” I believe that he was speaking as a […]

The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions Reader Jon H. emailed me Tom Friedman’s latest NYT Op/Ed piece, 30 Little Turtles. The editorial is about Indian call centers and what those jobs mean for the Indians who get them. It’s definitely worth reading, but that’s not the point of this post. In my […]

The Politicization and Bastardization of Science, Continued Via CalPundit, this news from the WaPo: President Bush yesterday dismissed two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics — a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells. In their places he appointed three new members, […]

The Other Danger of Protectionism Typically, if one country engages in protectionism, others will respond in kind. That’s exactly what’s about to happen: Four years after the WTO ruled against the United States, Congress has still failed to repeal export subsidies, known as the extraterritorial income exclusion, that the trade organization determined to be illegal. […]

Even the Well-Off Don’t Like Trade These Days Via Dan Drezner, I see that Tuesday’s USA Today reported that The poll shows that among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for actively promoting more free trade collapsed from 57% to less than half that, 28%. As Dan says, it’s not so much the […]

Debt Mountain In a post that relates to Kash’s Monday post on the current accounts deficit, Karsten, a European blogger who follows finance, explains why massive US deficits haven’t lead to soaring interest rates: As we all know that no saving of note takes place in the US we could assume that most of last […]