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A few comments about a much-discussed recent paper by Princeton University's Alan Blinder and Moody's Investors Service's Mark Zandi purporting to support the beneficial effect of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and stimulus in the ugly days of late 2008.... Continue reading
Publisher, real estate magnate and Hamlet-like Senatorial waverer Mort Zuckerman weighed in Monday, July 26, in the Financial Times on the meme of the moment: the business class' supposed lack of confidence in the administration, which is creating deep uncertainties... Continue reading
In the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, July 27, Dennis Berman comments on the strange plight of the credit raters.... Continue reading
The response to the Goldman, Sachs & Co. settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the Abacus CDOs has actually been relatively muted.... Continue reading
Earlier in the week, Brad DeLong approvingly linked to a piece by Christopher Hayes in the American Prospect on the matter of economic cycles. Hayes asks some questions that he admits rarely appear in political commentary: Are they necessary? And,... Continue reading
The debate over "austerity" has morphed from the op-ed pages of the Financial Times and onto a variety of blogs where it has set up a low humming sound, like bees.... Continue reading
In the Financial Times Tuesday, July 20, the "austerity debate" continues.... Continue reading
Recently, we've heard a lot of yearning for selected years past (1934, 1981, 2005). Strangely, no one has asked 1975 to poke up its pimply, sideburned head. The '70s, popularly speaking, stirs as much joy as an off-ramp on the freeway. In short, the '70s look a lot like, well, right now, sans Lady Gaga. Continue reading
With the financial reform package wrapped up, and midterm election fever building, the administration rolled out its big guns on economic policy Monday, July 19. The immediate issue is the extension of unemployment benefits: President Obama used his Sunday radio... Continue reading
It's a bad time for big ideas. Conservative, even libertarian, ideas about small government and low (better yet, no) taxes founder on challenges that demand the kind of response only a taxing nation-state can generate: terrorism, climate change, financial crisis, a hemorrhaging oil spill. That freedom-loving substitute for big government, the market, has seen its rationale, distilled into the efficient-market hypothesis, battered, perhaps buried. Free and deregulated markets fuel globalization, which, for all its rewards, creates vulnerabilities only a robust state can deter or remedy; it's incoherent to argue for free trade, open markets and a weakling state. Continue reading
