These two articles were juxtaposed in the NYT today.  At a casual glance they look contradictory, and in my experience in my personal sphere no one has asked for this to be explained in the political arena.  Maybe because I have a porcupine sort of personality.  We are apt to discuss parts more deeply but […]

(hat tip rjs)

The Washington Post carried a story on a Senate hearing on money laundering, one example being HSBC. The criticism was aimed at the OCC regulators who failed to pursue the issue.  Also notice the fuss is over a foreign bank. The U.S. affiliate of global banking giant HSBC was for years a haven for foreign […]

Via Alternet, Thomas Ferguson and Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen point us to the FEC deleting information on “dark” political contributions.  You need to go to the original to read the important details, especially on c(4) contributions.  The point that we rely on agency information to be reasonably accurate cannot be stressed enough. We have […]

I noticed that the notion of income inequality and consequences was described outside the box in this article in the NYT. Several ideas struck me about the article.  How people can work side by side with such little connection in their lives is instructive.  The sense of ‘commons’ is missing from the article could be […]

The Armed Services full committee meeting in light of the end of the latest round of talks with Iran and harsher sanctions (oil embargo) scheduled to take effect, points us to the need to figure out how to pay for another conflict that is not quick and victorious. The Washington Post quotes Senator Leahy: At […]

by Run 75441“The Red Light District of Sorts”The Democrats and the Republicans cannot agree on much these days. Because of the inability to agree, healthcare reform is aflame with controversy and in SCOTUS waiting for a decision on its constitutionality. Stimulating the economy languishes between cutting taxes for the rich in income to create jobs […]

Stan Collender notes that, for the first time in four years, the U.S. Treasury reported a surplus in the month of April.  It isn’t just that there was a surplus in April of 2008, though.  If you look back through Aprils (data here), the last time that month showed a deficit is 1983—the April less […]

The Atlantic and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities via Taxprofblog have cool graphs people ought to cut and paste to carry with them for discussions on taxes, income, income distribution, and political commentary.

Peter Dorman at Econospeak comments:  Bankrupt Rhetoric  I woke up this morning to Paul Ryan, describing his budget proposal, as quoted in the New York Times: “This is about putting an end to empty promises from a bankrupt government.” Bankrupt government? Let’s consider this more closely. The normal meaning of bankrupt is negative net worth, […]