– by New Deal democrat Despite the government shutdown, the FHFA did publish its repeat home sales index this morning. And since the S&P Case Shiller index is from a private entity, that was published as well. Between those two and the NAR’s existing home sales report, we still have pretty good visibility into that 90% […]

by Rebecca Wilder Lieblings quote of the day by Dean Baker: “The ECB is run by a perverse cult that worships 2.0 percent inflation and is prepared to sacrifice almost all other economic goals to meet this target.” The article goes on to argue that the ECB should increase its inflation target to 3-4% in […]

The sarcasm of the title of my recent post notwithstanding, there are some things economists understand to be true that are. Among those: People respond to incentives As with the Supreme Court, economists extend this principle to organizations, on the (generally correct) idea that organizations are made up of people who act in their own […]

Remember the argument that we shouldn’t tax people because they’ll just move elsewhere? The British government appears not to believe it. Will the Geithner/Summers axis continue lying that “we can’t do that”? Since it really is a Windfall Profit, taxing it seems a reasonable idea. And now we won’t even be able to pretend that […]