Tag Archives: economy

Douglas Holtz-Eakin Scores The Health Care Reform Bill

March 21, 2010 – 2:23 pm

And in doing so, he points out the shortcomings of the CBO scoring process:

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments

From Paul Ryan’s Mailbag

March 19, 2010 – 9:52 pm

An admission from the Congressional Budget Office: Factor in the “doc fix”, and one finds that $59 billion is added to the deficit over the next ten years.

Remind me why anyone is supposed to think that the health care reform bill before the House is the best bill that we can get.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Quote Of The Day

March 15, 2010 – 10:30 pm

So I see Paul Krugman has thrown his lot in with the neoconservatives who disdain multilateral institutions and prefer bellicose unilateralism when they confront a frustrating international situation.

–Dan Drezner. As I have written before, Krugman deserves his Nobel Prize. But it is exceedingly difficult–at best–to take him seriously as a pundit, or a would-be policymaker. More justly-earned criticism from Free Exchange.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

Taking On Paul Ryan’s Critics

March 15, 2010 – 10:22 pm

Andrew Biggs critiques the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s own critique of the Ryan fiscal roadmap. Key passage:

What’s a little disappointing is that the Congressional Budget Office report on Ryan’s plan has been available since late January, so there’s no need to rely on outdated Social Security Administration analyses of older versions of Ryan’s proposals.

Well, yes there is, if one wants to attack Paul Ryan for partisan purposes. But that’s about the only excuse.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

Lesson From Moody’s: Rewrite the Social Contract

March 15, 2010 – 12:30 pm

This story fits nicely with what I’ve been writing and saying about higher interest rates. Moody’s is a rating agency, not everyone’s favorite class of people, and definitely subject to bullying by the US govt. That’s why they’re laying out their metrics here. If debt service goes above 10% of govt revenue, you’re on debt-reversibility watch. Above 14%, you lose your AAA.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but: You can’t have a strong recovery without getting higher interest rates. And if interest rates should rise significantly in the near-midcurve, where US sovereign debt is concentrated, we’ll be in a very… interesting situation.

By Francis Cianfrocca | Posted in Blogs, Markets & Policy | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

And Speaking Of Paul Krugman . . .

March 14, 2010 – 10:24 pm

I suppose, as a fan of Rep. Paul Ryan, that I should be concerned that Krugman is going on, and on, and on about how bad the Ryan Fiscal Roadmap is; this is his latest post on the subject.

But then, I recall that Krugman doesn’t even seem to understand what he has written in his own economics textbook, and that he has a tendency to grossly mislead his readers when it comes to discussing the ideas of people Krugman doesn’t like. Remembering all of this, I think that I will put more stock in Ryan’s arguments.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

Joy!

March 14, 2010 – 9:58 pm

Moody’s is ticked off:

Moody’s Investor Service, the credit rating agency, will fire a warning shot at the US on Monday, saying that unless the country gets public finances into better shape than the Obama administration projects there would be “downward pressure” on its triple A credit rating.

Examining the administration’s outlook for the federal budget deficit, the agency said: “If such a trajectory were to materialise, there would at some point be downward pressure on the triple A rating of the federal government.”

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments

Team Obama’s Favorite Economic Myths

March 11, 2010 – 11:17 pm

This ought to kill off some shibboleths . . . assuming, of course, that the mainstream press will do its job and point out the fact that the Obama Administration is peddling misinformation about the economy, and about its own efforts to rescue the country from recession and depression.

I will say that I am more sympathetic to Ben Bernanke than the article appears to be. But that’s about my only major difference with it.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Trade Follies

March 11, 2010 – 7:06 am

More people should be outraged over the fact that the Obama Administration has settled into a default protectionist stance on the issue of trade. Restricting trade will do nothing whatsoever to improve our economy; if anything, protectionism only increases the chances that we will experience a double-dip recession. And yet, the Obama Administration does not seem to be willing to do anything in order to further the process of trade liberalization.

Building an economic Fortress America has never brought us prosperity in the past. It is impossible to see how it will bring us anything resembling prosperity in the future. And it is impossible to see how an administration that says it is committed to improving the economy could be taken seriously when it allows protectionism to run rampant in U.S. trade policy.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

It’s Not Rain, It’s Not Snow, And It’s Not Sleet . . .

March 7, 2010 – 2:14 am

But finances may cause the U.S. Postal Service to end Saturday deliveries. Over at his blog, Eric Zorn facetiously argues that we ought to get all of our mail on Saturdays, with every other day being mail-free. Of course, that argument is ridiculous, but perhaps only just barely ridiculous; it is difficult to imagine a monopoly as useless and value-less as the one that the Postal Service currently “enjoys.”

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

The Jobs Situation: Still Bleak

March 6, 2010 – 11:38 am

It’s not much fun reading this report:

Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, while cheering stock investors, hasn’t taken the threat of a double-dip recession off the table.

Even as the jobless rate held steady at 9.7 percent and the 36,000 workers laid off in February was much less than expected, economists and investment analysts said it’s still too early to discount the economy’s chances of revisiting recession.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

Government Estimates Ridiculously Wrong. Things Worse Than Originally Thought. Film At Eleven.

March 6, 2010 – 11:32 am

Remind me once again why I was supposed to think that government could effectively administer a public option for health care. As we can see, it can’t even competently manage its own finances:

A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration’s. That’s because CBO projects slightly slower economic growth than the White House.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments
- March 21, 2010 -

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