EconoSpeak

And, sorry, but no, simply saying things one does not agree with does not justify in engaging in unprovoked violence.  This is directed at the recent events in Berkeley where it appears that masked and self-identified "anarchists," (not "antifa members" as Hannity called them), engaged in violence that was not in self-defense. I am not all that happy about people shutting others down from simply speaking publicly, but I am completely opposed to doing this by means of unprovoked violence...

Washington Post columnist and occasional novelist and diplomat, David Ignatius, is one of the best informed and wisest of commentators on Middle East affairs.  Thus it is with concern that in yesterday's Washington Post in a column titled, "A new chance for Middle East peace?" he seems to have fallen for third rate propaganda largely being pushed by the Saudi government, although also backed by the UAE ambassador (closely allied to Saudi Arabia in their anti-Iran and anti-Qatar escapades),...

The latest from Michael Boskin belongs on the National Review: So far, Trump has failed to deliver any major legislative policy achievements. Nonetheless, he has helped the economy by rolling back President Barack Obama’s damaging regulatory and administrative diktats in areas such as energy, education, finance, and labor law. He offers no evidence for this spin – just a lot of babble regarding Trump tweets or whatever. But what caught my attention as well as that of Brad DeLong with this...

First they coddled the white supremacists with false equivalency, and I didn't resign from the Trump Evangelical Council because those protesting the white supremacists didn't have a permit...

Donald Trump is no stranger to outrageous public poses and statements, but his refusal to condemn white supremacists post-Charlottesville has apparently struck a nerve.  Has he crossed some sort of new line?  Here are some dark, speculative thoughts about the events of the past few days.I believe Trump’s impeachment is an option that political and financial elites are holding in reserve.  They appreciate the vehicle that has brought the hard right to power, but they are ready to remove it if...

I agree with the senior Robert E Lee as well as his descendant, Robert E. Lee V, and also the great grandsons of Thomas L. ("Stonewall") Jackson, William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, that Confederate monuments should be removed from public locations to either museums or other locations, much as was done in the former Soviet Union.In 1866, the senior Robert E. Lee wrote a letter to my collateral relative, Thomas Lafayette Rosser, last commander of the Laurel Brigade, who...

Who knew that neo-Nazi, KKK white supremacists and Trump supporters were liars, cry-babies AND hypocrites? The reasons for secession by the states of the Confederacy were not complex or ambiguous. They are not a mystery. They were proudly proclaimed by the Confederate states. The cornerstone of the Confederacy was slavery and the conviction of the racial superiority of the White man and the social, moral and political inferiority of Africans. This was stated unambiguously in the...

Jeet Heer has posted a timely and excellent essay at New Republic titled "Trump's Racism and the Cultural Marxism Myth." In his essay, Heer recounts much of the background to the Higgins memo that I have documented here, here and here. Heer credits William S. Lind as the major popularizer of the myth, as have I in my blog posts. What I'm posting here extends the analysis and reveals significant background about personnel and timelines to the story.In my most recent post, I started to probe...

I have a theory that at least some people at the Fed are supporting interest rate increases not because they are worried about incipient inflation that must be nipped in the bud in advance under a regime of inflation targeting, but because they are looking over the horizon and worrying about a possible recession in the not-too-distant future, and they want to be able to have interest rates high enough that they can then engage in lowering them as a stimulative policy tool under the...

Commander Bone Spurs was afraid that some of his supporters would be too thick to grasp the grudging, involuntary nature of his teleprompter recital. Just to make his bad faith perfectly clear, IMPOTUS tweeted additional remarks about his "additional remarks":