Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

I Blame This on the NHL

With all the talk of “Detroit,” you would think that Michigan would have lost the most employees, as a percentage of same, on the year. After all, the scariest graph of the U.S. MSAs isn’t scary for nothing. But the Regional and State Employment data is out for October (h/t CR), and there’s a different […]

Peter Dorman of Econospeak Writes, So I Don’t Have To

I’m just going to “Go Thoma” on him, since I can’t find anything to cut: Barack Obama tells us we should not investigate American intelligence agents or their overlings who are responsible for torturing hundreds of suspects in their custody. We have to forget about the past, he says, to concentrate our attention on the […]

Back-of-the-Envelope: Making Sense of TARP

Suppose I told you that there was a crisis with a stock, say, GE. That the price of the stock had dropped around 75% in the past year. And you responded, “But the problem is solved; the prices of long-term Call Options (say, the January 2011 20s) has gone up, as has their Open Interest. […]

Why is Obama asking for new power for the Treasury?

By Divorced one like Bush This past weekend I wrote about the OCC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and 4 rulings that this office has made over the last two presidencies. 1. Preventing state AG’s and the state banking departments from investigating and regulating national banks. 2004.2. Allowing Banks to become real estate […]

The Best and the Brightest Meme — Eight Years Too Late?

Ken Houghton CR beat me to commenting on this Mankiw whine post, partially because I couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say about it. (CR could. That’s why he gets the big bucks.) But now that CR has done the heavy lifting, let’s look at the other aspect: Mankiw’s standard: Based a standard ranking of […]

Why Conservatives Hate Social Security

By Bruce Webb PGL raises and answers this question over at Econospeak Health Care Debate: So This is Why Conservatives Hate Social Security. Or rather he allows Conservatives in the person of Michael Cannon at Cato admit the fundamental truth: successful government social programs fatally undercut future political success for the Right. Cannon: Blocking Obama’s […]

Open Thread II: Treasury Boogaloo

Geithner it is. I guess we can pretend he’s not a Clinton administration alum. And he has the right experience: Though not an economist, Mr. Geithner has a deep understanding of monetary and fiscal policy and broad experience in international trade issues. Before the current crisis, he was involved in the bailouts of Mexico, Indonesia, […]

Waiting for the DeLong-Fish Cage Match

While I’m trying to decide whether unmanaged funds are preferrable to mismanaged ones, and wondering whether any discussion of Mark Cuban (I like the picture better than CNN’s) belong here,* the NYT decides to continue its determined destruction of its reputation. Stanley Fish manages to forget—or, more accurately, ignore, since he mentions it in the […]