Another Reason You Can Have Him
Fitch won’t downgrade the U.S., but they have downgraded Chirstiedom, officially because he didn’t pillage the state’s severely-underfunded Pension Funds enough. Of course, those Pension Funds wouldn’t...
View ArticleDeficit: Why Should I Care?
by Mike Kimel Hi folks! Long time readers probably know I’ve been haranguing on the deficit and the national debt for a long time. Last week I got an e-mail telling me about a new book called “Deficit:...
View ArticleDisaster Aid Disaster Averted, barely
By Linda Beale Disaster Aid Disaster Averted, barely. Once again, Republicans intent on obstructing the normal operation of the federal government unless they can extract cuts to programs they don’t...
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Welfare, I’m not hurting from it and neither are you.
A good friend and I got into an email debate. He sent me the latest message regarding how wonderful it is that Florida is going to be drug testing welfare recipients. I responded that I’ll consider the...
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Employment and Deficits: A Tale of Two Administrations
Stan Collender notes that, for the first time in four years, the U.S. Treasury reported a surplus in the month of April. It isn’t just that there was a surplus in April of 2008, though. If you look...
View Article‘Deficit Debate Driven by the Wealthy’
And another view on the upcoming election deals we need to worry about in addition to party agendas and deals. Doubling down on upward distribution of wealth remains the name of this game…it is hard...
View ArticleThe rest of the dinner table deficit/debt discussion: Equity
I promise, there are numbers here, but lets have some fun first and write a screen play to set up the point. It is long, but… “Dear, I’m getting nervous. We seem to keep adding to how much money we...
View Article$1 trillion to be spent on direct hiring…that’s the ticket!
With all this stalemate posturing in Washington, today Chris Hayes has come up with the best idea I have heard yet to move the players. And, in my opinion actually solve our economic depression. One...
View ArticleAusterity and Budgets explained
In support of Beverly’s latest post and all her past postings wanting for Obama (or the Dem’s in general I would say) to explain the truth about how a government’s money really flows, I present this...
View ArticleThree guesses on where chaining the CPI came from
It’s history lesson time again. An awful lot of talk and writing about the chained CPI has been focused on the results of its implementation on Social Security. Using this formula for figuring the cost...
View ArticleWhen it comes to finding money: People vs Corporations, $535 billion over 10...
As we continue this fight regarding the national budget, funding for the people, (food, unemployment, medical), entitlements and the overall moral position this nation has and will take with its money,...
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Debts, Deficits and Social Security
With the release of Tim Geithner’s new autobiography the old quarrel about whether Social Security does or even can add to “the deficit” has cropped up again. So rather than weigh in let me start from...
View ArticleCBO Aug 7, 2015: Monthly Budget Review for July
Monthly Budget Review for July 2015 Bolding mine: The federal government’s budget deficit amounted to $463 billion for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2015, CBO estimates. That deficit was $2...
View ArticleMeme of The Day: "Bond Vigilantes"
The gents at Capital Gains and Games—and soon, likely, the ma’am at EconMom—are in the throes of ecstasy (not necessarily the drug). There are “bond vigilantes” on the horizon. Stan Collender: The bond...
View ArticleBrad DeLong Lets the Cat Out of the Bag
Responding to EconomistMom, he ends his breakdown of flows with: Aiming for a balanced unified deficit over the business cycle would, I think, be a good thing economically–but I really do not see how...
View ArticleIs David Leonhardt pretending Henry Paulson did his job?
Or does he know better? This year’s election coincided with an important moment in the financial crisis. The credit markets have stabilized in the last few weeks and even improved a bit. But the rest...
View Article1,121 Words on Bruce’s Post, with footnote
I’m going to have to do a little clean-up work here (i.e., run the data in Excel instead of Stata), so I’ll ask forgiveness for the double-labels and all that.Graphic redone; data as per FRED. I think...
View Article‘Headline’ Surplus/Deficit and ‘Headline’ Debt
by Bruce Webb In the course of a post called the The Vanishing Surplus-Revealed there arose a semantic dispute about what ‘surplus’ means. Well I maintain that the answer to that question is not in...
View ArticleMore from CBO’s ‘Long Term Budget Outlook’
by Bruce Webb In a previous post I highlighted the chapter of CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook that pertained to Social Security. But the Report goes beyond that and in fact focuses on two different...
View ArticlePresident’s Proposals would Produce Lower Deficits than Continuing Current...
by Bruce Webb That is the subtitle of the new Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analysis of the Aug 25th CBO and OMB Reports on projected budget deficits that is being injected into the...
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