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

PSA

Via Andrew Samwick at Capital Gains and Games, note that David Altig’s Macroblog is back. (Altig is now the Research Director at the FRB Atlanta; it appears he has settled into the job and is expanding his bandwidth.) As Dr. Samwick said, set your bookmarks (or RSS feeders or whatever all the Cuil kids are […]

The OTHER Reason SonofaBirch and Biden would result in a McCain victory

No matter who “won.” Anyone who knows the phrase “think at the margin”—with or without the differential calculus and comparative statics—would have predicted that the Bankruptcy Bill (a.k.a. The Ken Lewis Retirement Subsidy Act) would damage to the economy when it was least able to survive the damage. What no one knew for certain was […]

"Yours!"

Fed values Bear Stearns assets at a level where it has only cost them $100,000nothing—so far. (Indeed, there’s a $50,000 “buffer” left.) Strangely, the scuttlebutt in the market yesterday was that the valuation should be around $24 billion. Or at least that’s how I read this paragraph: If the portfolio’s value were to drop to […]

A Quick One: Inflationary Credit Recession Strategies

Tom’s doing some heavy lifting, PGL is in form, Bruce has started SocSec 101, and the entire economics blogsphere is having so many conniptions over Hillary that you’d think the CEA was actually the Shadow Government. So I just want start easy, and take a look at three easy-to-compare data points:First, the Federal Funds target […]