I hesitate to excerpt from this because it says it all so well and so briefly. But: …the more taxes the US government collects, the more money it loses. When the US government declines to sell a 10 year Treasury bill at a real rate interest rate of –0.57 percent it is agreeing to pay, […]

A lot of people out there seem to have the notion that Greece’s troubles are the result of laziness. That really doesn’t seem to be true. OECD: Average annual hours actually worked per worker 2000-2010 Germany 1473 1458 1445 1439 1442 1434 1430 1430 1426 1390 1419 Greece 2121 2121 2109 2103 2082 2086 2148 […]

Or: Chris Mooney Should Really Learn to Use Graphics More He’s got a great piece (“Reality Bites Republicans“) up over at The Nation on the rise of fact checkers, the perception that they’re bend-over-backward (or forward…) “even handed” in the face of blatant falsehood asymmetry, and long-term analysis of results from PolitiFact. But he also […]

Mike Konczal floats a very interesting idea emailed to him by Richard Clayton, the Research Director of Change To Win (my bold for quick scanning). under Section 14 b 1 the Fed has the authority to purchase any obligation of a state or local government of 6 months maturity or less. This provision seems clearly […]

Lots of excellent pushback against Jonathan Haidt’s crazy assertion that Republicans have become the party of working people. A great takedown by Larry Bartells, you can follow the rest from there. Haidt uses an awful lot of words, numbers, pictures, and general hand-waving to point out obscure the fact that white southern Democrats have gone […]

Andrew Oh-Willeke points us to this, on the job market for lawyers: Slightly more than half of the class of 2011 — 55 percent — found full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage nine months after they graduated, according to employment figures released on June 18 by the American Bar Association. I couldn’t find a […]

Coming at this question from my typical perspective: a business owner facing a national economy. You run a mid-sized business selling high-quality furniture. You’ve developed a new chair that’s better than the other chairs on the market. (Think: the Herman Miller Aeron Chair.) Say you’re planning to sell it for $700. (You can’t sell it […]

The Fed’s credibility is obviously important. If people believe that they can and will do what they say they’re going to do — and that it will have the desired effect — they can affect the the real economy (at least short-term) by just making promises — Open Mouth Operations. (Though they must actually do […]

Or: Yes, The Rich Really Are Different You’ve all probably seen the depressing reports from the newly issued 2010 edition of the Fed’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finance, in particular the 39% drop in median household net worth, ’07-’10. Here’s a picture (click for larger): The well-off have done fine. In the greatest economic downturn […]

Noahpinion points us to — and goggles in amazement at — Robert Barro’s latest op-ed in the WSJ. Why This Slow Recovery Is Like No Recovery This prompts me to republish an open letter to Professor Barro that I posted some years ago. (To which, not surprisingly, I never received a reply.) It speaks volumes […]