by Mike Kimel In this post, I will show that during the New Deal era, changes in the real economic growth rate can be explained almost entirely by the earlier changes in federal government’s non-defense spending. There are going to be a lot of words at first – but if you’re the impatient type, feel […]

One of the best rules in mathematics is that, to determine the value of all the variables, you need only as many distinct equations as you have variables. (previous sentence edited for clarity.) So let’s combine a couple of recent articles (h/t Mark Thoma for the first, Digby for the second.) Richard Florida finds three […]

As usual Yves is well articulated and clear.

Robert Waldmann Kevin Drum writes“The GOP leadership has released “Tread Boldly,” a guidebook for Republican members of congress during the summer recess, and it includes a whole section called “Spending Restraint Solutions for Discussion.” Finally, we’ll get some details! So here they are: ‘Canceling unspent “stimulus” funds, saving up to $266 billion …’ Being hep […]

We’re used to that line by now. Ross Perot—one of the more prominent people who got rich due to government contracts—used it, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are using it (while desperately hoping you don’t pay attention to how they ran Lucent/HP or eBay), and Aaron Sorkin even had Charles Grodin say it in Dave, […]

Sometimes, I hate being right. Most of those times are when I take a pessimistic view of data; this has happened a lot recently. It gets worse when the people who agree with you are none other than The Giant Vampire Squid. As the Wall Street Journal notes: Zero — First quarter GDP growth, minus […]

by cactus Last week I wrote a post about some nonsense Glen Beck was peddling, with said nonsense originating with Thomas Woods.  Woods claimed a smorgasbord of things, the dollar meal version being: 1.  lefties talk up how the New Deal (big gubmint, tax hikes) saved the economy from the Great Depression but it didn’t […]

We are now almost 24 months into the Great Recession. While many expect NBER will eventually say that The Great Recession ended several months ago, they have not yet. By contrast, the recession that began The Great Depression, per NBER, lasted 43 months. It seems only fair to compare the two, so I trust I […]

Mish sends us to “Track the Money,” recovery.gov’s breakdown of where funds have been sent and spent. He’s not happy, but I suspect he’s suffering the Jared Bernstein Problem: only looking at one side of the equation. But—and this is the key “but”—the reason it is right to do that is that ARRA money has […]

Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong just posted a very interesting Draft Henry George lecture. It contains ideas which I haven’t found written down before by Brad or by Krugman. I strongly recommend reading it (for one thing I don’t know how to cut and paste from it). People who have read the draft lecture are invited […]