Tag Archives: Featured Stories

Haley  Nikki Haley is staying in the race for the Republican nomination, at least for now.    Why?  If she only cares about becoming president, this year could be her best shot even with Trump way ahead of her in the polls.  Trump may be convicted or become incapacitated, and she could win the nomination as the last woman standing.  It is far from clear her political brand will be in better shape with Republican primary voters 4 years from...

By “here” I refer to my home town Washington DC. The answer, obviously, is that Binyamin Netanyahu is in charge there. At least he has much more influence over US Federal Government spending than the guy wincing in the photo. Both Biden and Netanyahu know that Netanyahu has much more support in the US Congress than Biden and both understand that Congress can control spending, sometimes by over riding vetos. Biden has the impossible task of...

This post is long and flirts with the 10% fair use limit, but I’ll try to keep under it.Dave Kellogg has a blog post up from a few days ago comparing the messaging of Team Trump vs Team Biden. Read the whole thing, but here are some core points. Kellogg distills the Democratic two-word message to “Save Democracy” and the GOP two-word message to “Save America.”In short: • “Republicans want to save the country, Democrats want to save an idea. Saving...

There is so much to say about the Claudine Gay affair, anti-semitism at Harvard, and Harvard’s response to recent student protests that I have opted to say nothing.  But over at Café Hayek, libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux asks an interesting question: How does Claudine Gay’s “my truth” differ from Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”? It seems to me that these ‘concepts’ share much with each other and that each is equally unwarranted. ...

Our current economic model, premised on profits and returns, consumption, and growth — on greed, has proven to be problematic for the environment, society, and governance.*   Over time, humans have inflicted grave damage to the land, forests, rivers, streams, and atmosphere. Some of this was in the interest of survival. A lot more was done in the interest of greed. Of late, we have done especially grave damage to the atmosphere by burning...

I don’t know if kids these days still use the slang, but back in the glory days of blogging, a way to mock chicken hawks was to call them keyboard warriors or the 101st chairborn. These were people convinced they were fighting terror by advocating aggressive foreign policy in the safety of their own house (or by other insulting assumption their mother’s basement). I guess an even sillier bunch were the people who felt brave and manly while playing,...

I guess this is the latest installment in my soft landing series. However, it might also be a warning of terrible trouble in the fairly near future (next 5 years). It is certainly proof (if more were needed) that I am clueless. The topic is the US housing market. This is highly related to the (possible) soft landing as one important surprise is that residential construction has held up in spite of high mortgage interest rates. The question for...

The Supreme Court needs to decide whether the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running for or serving as President again, and whether the President – and therefore Trump – enjoys broad criminal immunity for acts taken while in office.  These cases highlight the intrinsically political nature of the Court itself.  Many legal and political commentators believe that a unanimous decision is important for the country, and that consensus will be important...

Brad DeLong asked me if I had an explanation of how the US economy managed to land softly. He is confident that it is softly landing. This encourages me to actually try to do my job for once and act as a macroeconomist, and also to return to blogging here some. In the spirit of challenging reopening, I will indulge myself by skimping on links, simply asserting things which I could and should back up with a bit of Google. The basic story is that...

Bruce Webb introduced the Social Security Northwest Plan in 2009.  He credited Arne and Dale as co-authors.  The NW Plan only increases payroll taxes if increases are needed.  For years before 2009 Bruce had confidence that forecasts were too pessimistic, but he was convinced by Arne to consider a plan that included triggers.  Arne’s solution was overly complicated, but Dale Coberly showed that a permanent solution could be had by simply increasing...