Ken Houghton notes the obvious corollary to Bruce Webb’s post on the 1st: if you don’t “read the bill,” the obstructionists will lie about it. UPDATE: And now corrects his misreading (see Bruce’s update below, following on Mitt Shook’s comment). Milt Shook demonstrates in detail that, even if you do, people such as Alan Caruba […]

Robert Waldmann I hate to type that headline given the health care reform debate, but I am alarmed by Karen DeYoung’s article in the Washington Post about new efforts to get Afghans to stop producing opium — all new this time with carrots. The problem is that the price of wheat is too low. The […]

Curv3ball at The Poor Man warms the cockles of this Northeast Philadelphia native’s heart. Go Read the Whole Thing. Gary Becker must be rolling over in his grave.

Dear Barry: The need for posts such as this one recurs because the large majority of economists are idiots. (Multiple exceptions noted—but not enough to change the truth of the initial statement.) As the regulatory reform report notes (quoted by PK at the last link above): In fact, enforcement of CRA was weakened during the […]

Come on, guys, somebody take it to the Next Step. Matt Y comes closer than anyone else to getting to the truth of the problem with Macroeconomics. Following Justin FoxSteven Levitt’s summary, Matt asks the next question: So why should it be that “in the current regime, if [macro models] are not meticulously constructed from […]

Cassander, writing at Steve Keen’s Debtwatch,* puts the hammer to those arguing that the death of the patient had nothing to do with the doctor: What a load of bollocks. The “principles of economics” that [N. Gregory] Mankiw champions, and the “More economic research (and teaching)” that [Doug] McTaggart et al are calling for, are […]

Dear Brad, Do you want to reconsider the title of this post in the context of this article? An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall […]

I’m going to have to do a little clean-up work here (i.e., run the data in Excel instead of Stata), so I’ll ask forgiveness for the double-labels and all that.Graphic redone; data as per FRED. I think the story is clear. The long version is Bruce’s post below. What is now the top line is […]

Reality (h/t Dr. Black): In certain ZIP codes in places like Homestead and Florida City, around 25 percent of the homes are in one stage of foreclosure or another. Countless others were built by developers and sit vacant in ghostly subdivisions, with not a buyer in sight. In the days after Andrew, then-Dade County Emergency […]

This is why we don’t believe the bailout will work the way you think it will (i.e., to increase lending): Recently, securities rated AAA have changed hands for roughly 30 cents on the dollar, and most of the buyers have been hedge funds acting opportunistically on a bet that prices will rise over time. However, […]