This post is late in the game but might be handy. Certainly a lot has been said so far. American Jobs Act 2011 link and transcript of speech by the President.

I still think Obama is toast—a result of his own making, since he’s really the apotheosis of a government-hating Republican who never tries to do anything because he’s afraid it would succeed.  He’s basically Jon Huntsman, economic policy and all, with a slightly better social policy—or at least a willingness not to try to compete […]

Busy day on several fronts, but these should be discussed and I’ve already posted one rant this week, so a riff on the second piece would be overkill. Sort of an Open Thread, with four topics. Tyler Cowen argues that, instead of giving out stimulus monies, the government should just hire people directly. No, really: […]

Mark Thoma joins Dr. Black, putting him one-up on some Liberal Bloggers Who Should Know Better.* Thoma: 1. You have to make the Republicans pay in terms of eroded public support before they will agree to cooperate at all. The president in particular has not played a long-run strategy, the Republicans have, and the results […]

My aging Subaru had a problem a while back. Leak of transmission fluid; a seal or another failing, leading to steady dripping out. And with little need to open the hood, no gauge—or even an “idiot light”—on the dashboard, it dripped for quite a while. And then some. The first repair—call it Quizzical Effort 1—refilled […]

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand released a paper by Nicolas Groshenny last month—I’m behind on planning for Chanukkah; that I got to a paper from New Zealand about U.S. monetary policy this soon is, er, probably one of the reasons why—in which he evaluates the counterfactual of following the “Taylor Rule” from 2002 to […]

NBER just made official what we all knew they would say: the Great Recession ended in June of 2009. For those who are encouraged, note that they also do not indicate that there was a recession from March of 1933 to May of 1937, that the eighteen (18) months indicated is the longest since 1929-1933, […]

Rdan here…Rebecca just emerged from the bottom of the Grand Canyon on her way to a massage somewhere in the Southwest. Hence for some reason she is not publishing much at the moment.:) This one is late to AB, but still intersting. by Rebecca WilderConsumer confidence: that extremely coincident, but often cited as leading consumer […]

We keep hearing about the Texas Miracle.  It’s been mythic since “openly gay” Governor Rick Perry declared that Texas was in great shape, in no need of stimulus monies at all—after receiving enough to turn his state’s fourteen-figure budget deficit into a surplus. (UPDATE: Links added. And that final link was rather prophetic.) So when […]

I spent the last hours of last night watching the PBS “Human Experience” episode on the Civilian Conservation Corps. A few million people put to work: for long hours, living in Army barracks, with all but $5 of their pay having to be sent home every week. Gosh, sounds just right as part of FDR’s […]