Tag Archive
Obama’s Failure: Part 2
A few of you have called me harsh in my criticism of Obama. Perhaps I am. Allow me to expand a little on why I have the opinion I do. My narrative goes this way:
My worldview is largely informed by my own experience and education. No news in that. But it is heavily influenced by… »
Obama’s Failure
Last night Obama made a properly muted speech about our retreat from Iraq. A war that should never have been. Not a military defeat, but not a win. Just a massive cost, with no gain, and a huge loss of prestige. Then came the zinger: now we should turn our focus to domestic issues.
Huh?
A little… »
The Slowdown Is For Real; Is Deflation Next?
What can we say about today’s GDP report? Not much that hasn’t already ben said: the economy is slowing down quite quickly. Growth in the second quarter fell to 2.4%, compared with 5.0% in the last quarter of 2009, and 3.7% in the first quarter 2010. That’s fairly dramatic and a much more rapid slow… »
Austerity: A Primer. The Ideas Behind The Debate.
In view of the ongoing, and fraught, discussion about austerity measures and their effect, I thought I would present the theories underlying the two sides of debate.
Basically we are going through a rehash of the Orthodox versus Keynes argument that has been an episodic moment for decades. That it remains unresolved is testimony to the… »
Consumers Cut Back
One small note on the economic data.
Consumer credit is shrinking at a fairly rapid rate. This is particularly true of credit card debt.
The facts:
Federal Reserve Board data for May shows total US consumer credit dropping $9.15 billion in May, down to a total outstanding debt of $2.42 trillion. That’s an annualized rate of decline of… »
The Rotten Thing About Real Estate
Once in a while I come across an article that hits a major problem head on. More often than not those articles are written by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Today he does it again with an analysis of housing. I would give you the link, but the article seems to have slipped from… »
Meanness, Mediocrity, and Bank Reform
It takes a particularly virulent form of mean spiritedness for a nation to walk away from its most vulnerable citizens at a time of their greatest need. Yet that is what the US, and by implication you and I, has just done. The Senate was unable to muster enough votes to continue the extension of… »