A Few Lessons from the IRS Scandal
Just back from a rousing debate on CNBC on the IRS scandal (a tough way to start the day but always a pleasure to mix it up with the the Squawk team and the smart and balanced Tony Fratto). Key points, as I see them: –While the pugilistic Joe Kernen was disappointed to hear it, I stand [...]
Why Should Any Of These Groups Have Tax-Exempt Status?
Nope, I’m not going to defend the IRS, which appears to have acted in ways wholly inconsistent with their mandate for unbiased investigations into, in this case, whether certain political groups should receive tax-exempt status. It is unclear how high up the chain of command these untoward actions went, but this morning’s news suggests it [...]
Markets, Power, and Economic Policy
Here’s an interesting piece worth slogging through on ways in which policy changes implied by traditional economic analysis can skew power in ways that make a lot of people a lot worse off. The prose is a bit dense and opaque, but the point and the many historical examples are interesting and convincing. The authors—Acemoglu and Robinson—are [...]
The Political Imbalance Facing Unions in America
Harold Meyerson’s piece on the future of labor unions is a worthy read on an important topic (which, ftr, is pretty much always the case with Harold’s commentaries). Harold’s thesis, one that the economist Richard Freeman (dean emeritus of labor economists and one of my heroes) hypothesized about years ago in his book “America Works,” [...]
What Debt Crisis, Indeed? Things that Make You Go Hmmmmm…
OK, I know that what’s happening in the debt debate is more complicated than a grad student found some mistakes in a spreadsheet and the spell that had bewitched the nation was broken. But that’s kinda what seems to be happening. This Politico piece tells of some Democrats coming around to the view that “[t]here’s no [...]
This FAA Sequester Vote Doesn’t Smell Right
Well, well. It appears that both the Senate and House have voted to end sequester-imposed furloughs of air traffic controllers, just in time for the weekend. You choose: is this bipartisan support to mitigate one of the noxious effects of sequestration, which I and others have been tracking? Or is it papering over the high-visibility [...]
Airport Sequester Watch: Live!
Heading out to the left coast, in the air with what looks like a pretty good wifi connection. Re sequester, definitely saw some delays at DC National—spoke to the folks sending flights to NYC and they said that backups were already starting, driven by the furloughs of 1,500 air-traffic controllers that commenced yesterday. (Though, truth [...]
The Preferences of the Wealthy and Their Role in Our Politics
A critical concern of our time is not simply our high levels of income inequality and their negative impact on opportunity and mobility. It’s how inequality and immobility become entrenched in the system—how they replicate. In a nation like ours, where the flow of money into politics keeps getting stronger, one way this occurs is [...]
The Reinhart/Rogoff Mistake and Economic Epistemology
By now, it is well known, at least in wonkish circles, that the economists Reinhart&Rogoff (R&R) made a number of errors in deriving their highly influential finding that debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% lead to slower growth. Kudos to the various academics and bloggers who dug into this—particularly Herndan et al, who most recently found and [...]
Budget Snippets
I’ve been gum flapping on the President’s new budget all day in two cities and I’m not done yet. But here are some brief thoughts, if not for your enlightenment then for your entertainment. –From the department of “who didn’t see that coming?” here’s Rep Eric Cantor’s response: “Let’s set aside our differences and come [...]
Republican Leadership Endorses Keynesian Stimulus!
This morning’s events included a surprising announcement from GOP leaders who’d met over the weekend to discuss budget strategy. According to an aide present at the weekend retreat, Rep Paul Ryan, the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee, brought a version of John Maynard Keynes treatise, “The General Theory…” as a joke. “He thought he’d [...]
David Stockman Goes Way, Way Over the Top
He has a featured piece in today’s NYT which, while about 11.8% absolutely and totally on target, is mostly a horrific screed, an ahistorical, dystopic, Hunger-Games vision of America based on debt obsession and willful ignorance of macroeconomics and the impact of market failure. The first sign of a problem here comes from a mash-up [...]
Got Any Spare Change (Theory)?
As far as I’m concerned, people like me spend too much time on the facts and not enough time on how to build a movement that would marshal those facts on behalf of progressive change in economic and fiscal policy. As I’ve written many times, my experiences on the road and in the media often [...]
Growth and Debt: It’s What Everyone’s Talkin’ About!
One way I get a bead on what folks are thinking about is when lots of people start asking the same question. Well, over the past week, a lot of people have been asking about the relationship between a country’s debt level and its growth. This seems to have been precipitated by a couple of [...]
R’s Makeover
Based on their new analysis, one could hold forth on the fundamental challenge facing Republicans as they contemplate how to turn around their electoral fortunes. The key theme would be how you somehow manage to communicate “we’re good with policy X” when your base is clearly not there. Or I could just show you this [...]
Passing Some Real Time with Bill Maher
Had great fun on the Bill Maher show last night with the wonderful Rachel Maddow and reasonable Republican former Congressman Tom Davis. Bill is a true force of nature. Henceforth, I will not be able to refer to our over-stacked defense complex without envisioning “big fake …!” I thought Rachel made really piercing points about [...]
Musing from 32,000 Feet: Why Does Rep Paul Ryan Get So Much Attention?
Zipping across the land with a nice internet connection, so a good time to reflect a bit (looking down on clouds from above broadens the perspective a bit, I find). So, I’m doing a radio interview last night, and moderately impressed with myself for being able to speak coherently about four different budgets: Ryan’s, Senate’s, [...]
Amidst the Madness, Let’s Not Overlook the CPC’s Budget
Allow me to join the chorus of voices in support of another budget out this week, one I fear may be overlooked, by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Here’s the exec sum, and note what comes first: job creation! OMG! That’s followed by many ideas we tout here at OTE, including a financial transaction tax, ending [...]
The Tyranny of the Average
As someone who works with numbers a lot, I find averages to be tremendously helpful. I’d be lost without them.* But there’s one area where averages have been misleadingly used of late, an area where the stakes are extremely high—this is far from academic. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that if we don’t [...]
Some Thoughts About the Market Melt-Up Amidst the Ongoing Slog
Over at MSNBC.com.
Jared Bernstein’s areas of expertise include federal and state economic and fiscal policies, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, international comparisons, and the analysis of financial and housing markets.
