Political Bloviation

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Robert Reich Why It’s Foolish to Weaken the Dollar to Create Jobs. He misses a few things here: Here’s the theory. As the dollar falls relative to foreign currencies, everything we export becomes less expensive to foreign consumers. So they buy more of our stuff, creating more jobs in the U.S. At the same time, [...]

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Director’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Economic Outlook and Fiscal Policy Choices. The short story is that any kind of extension will be expensive and lead to lower growth in the future. Alternatives for stimulating demand in order of bang for the buck are: Temporary increase in aid to the unemployed Temporary reduction in [...]

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I’ve had a few exchanges with my Dad about politics. He’s pretty far to my right. During the 2008 election cycle I heard he and some of his friends making sour comments about the “Kenyan socialist” and how his Presidential ambitions were just frightening. He blames Obama for the latest increase in his Medicare premiums, [...]

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Economist’s View: “The Odd Logic of Tort Reform”. It’s a very nice review of actual data and econ journals on the effects of tort reform. To summarize: very, very little. It appears to be a politically motivated red-herring designed to punish a left leaning constituency. Nothing more, nothing less. Texas makes a lovely example, the [...]

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It’s the same answer to every problem: Cut taxes, it’s magic! In exactly the same way leprechauns and unicorns are magic. Tax cuts are the pixie dust of the GOP, just sprinkle them and believe really, really hard and you can fly! It reflects an economic outlook on about the same grade level as Peter [...]

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Economist’s View: How Close to Deflation are We?. The gist here is that actual inflation is very near to slightly below zero. Using inflation fears as a reason to avoid further stimulus is simply unfounded. Deflation is a much more pressing concern. A more important question is what can they do, given that interest rates [...]

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Economist’s View: Why is the American Jobs Machine Broken?. This is an important discussion that, at it’s heart, is about “who killed the American dream”? He points to a long piece from Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel) summarized thusly: The piece is long, detailed and worth reading in full, but the central point is [...]

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Paul Krugman continues to tilt at windmills: Op-Ed Columnist – Myths of Austerity – NYTimes.com. Which brings me to the subject of today’s column. For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. That is, somehow [...]

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Jonah Goldberg, Quarter Slave (Conceptually). Fivethirtyeight.com posts a reply to Jonah Goldberg’s latest attempt to establish false equivalence between taxes and slavery from the op-ed pages of USA Today. Goldberg wants to tell us we’re slaves to teh gubbermint until “Tax Freedom Day”, which is sometime this week. Overblown rhetoric aside, the real question is: [...]

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Op-Ed Columnist – Chinese New Year – NYTimes.com. Krugman suggests that some protectionism against the Chinese may be a good thing: Recently Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, dismissed foreign complaints: “On one hand, you are asking for the yuan to appreciate, and on the other hand, you are taking all kinds of protectionist measures.” Indeed: [...]

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Economist’s View: “We Project a $242 Billion Surplus for Medicare by 2020, Not a Deficit”. It seems to me to be a btter way ay looking at how all the moving pieces work together. Improving health in turn spurs economic growth, it really seems intuitive once you say it out loud.

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From my perspective this is just stating the obvious, but in Washington politics always trumps economic common sense. …Washington is mired in a warped political debate. Congressional Republicans say continued economic weakness is proof that February’s stimulus package failed. Lawmakers in both parties fret that large budget deficits preclude more stimulus, lest the burden of [...]

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Including people who have given up and looking and those who have part time job, but want full time employment the unemployment rate looks closer to 18%. Put another way, it approaches the level seen during the 1930s. I think I need a drink… The part-time business gets to one of the many failings with [...]

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Some call it recovery – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com. Paul says while it might be a “recovery” in terms of conventional definition, but job creation still lags. The question seems to be why isn’t job creation part of the definition of recovery.

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Economist’s View: Jobs Report Roundup. Good round-up by Mark Thoma. It does not appear that prosperity is just around the corner, but things are looking less bad. It still looks like it may be Q1 or Q2 of 2010 before we stop shedding jobs and start seeing positive employment numbers.

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The Economist brings us a quick, concise look at how we got into this economic crisis in animated graphs from The Great Depression to today. It shows the story really took off after 1980 with exploding trade and federal budget deficits. If it makes some out there happy, blame accrues to both Democrats than Republicans [...]

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Good piece by Leonhardt on health reform here: Economic Scene – Support for Health Reform Requires Facing Facts on Costs – NYTimes.com. So what’s in health reform for the majority of voters who already have health insurance? David Leonhardt makes a try to answer: $6500 per year per household. That’s what we spend over and [...]

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Lawmakers Warned About Health Costs CBO Chief Says Democrats’ Proposals Lack Necessary Controls on Spending via Budget Analyst Assails Cost of Congress’s Health-Care Proposals – washingtonpost.com. Look, the current situation in US health care simply isn’t sustainable. Obama campaigned against repealing the exemption on employer health benefits. It’s a huge subsidy to the fraying patchwork [...]

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Economist’s View: Money Monopoly -Mark Thoma Legislators from both parties support legislation that would allow the state to accept IOU’s issued by the state because of the ongoing fiscal crisis in California as legal tender for the payment of taxes and state fees. This would effectively establish a new state controlled currency. If it passes, [...]

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