Mrs. CC and I are headed off to Switzerland tonight for a week of winter sports and debauchery high-minded panel discussions in the mountain resort of Davos. I will be posting regularly and even, heaven forfend, vlogging. But before I go, I’ll leave you with these encouraging words from Arthur Jensen, the big-media CEO (played [...]

The Economic Cycle Research Institute, a forecasting firm in New York, did a better job of calling the start of the last recession than just about anybody else, so I checked in last week with ECRI managing director Lakshman Achuthan to see where he thought things stood. He still doesn’t think we’re quite in a [...]

My list of the 10 reasons why 2008 is different from 1971 caught the attention of A-list econoblogger Tyler Cowen (wow, writing lists really is a surefire ticket to blogging fame and fortune). Writes Cowen: This is funny … but of course it misses the point. One big difference is that we use energy much [...]

I have a column in the magazine with “The Science of Romance” on the cover (in the U.S., overseas it’s Ny lon kong–which, somewhat disappointedly, is not the amazing tale of a giant pantyhosed gorilla) and online here. The column begins: Every day it’s looking more like a recession in the U.S. The December economic [...]

President Bush mentioned (outlined is really too strong a word) his 1% solution for the economic slowdown this morning. That is, a temporary stimulus that equals about 1% of GDP. That is, $140 billion. This comes after Ben Bernanke declared Thursday that he favored temporary fiscal stimulus of about that size, and made pretty clear [...]

The commenter formerly known as p_lukasiak (now charmingly rechristened mediasux), asks an excellent question: Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the whole purpose of the Fed was to act as a brake on the economy when inflation rears its ugly head. And while I was initially supportive of a stimulus package, the problems with [...]

The long-running saga of Danish taxes and skilled workers has taken a dramatic new twist, with the broadcast on Danish TV Wednesday night of an episode of the financial news show Magasinet Penge titled Kold dansk skulder til udenlandsk arbejdskraft, which means just what you think it means (if you think it means “Cold Danish [...]

I’m big on adjusting for inflation when measuring the purported positive revenue impact of tax cuts (which makes most of that purported positive impact disappear). But in his blog today, Paul Krugman (who’s, like, good at math and stuff) does me one better and adjusts for population growth: [F]ederal revenues rose 80 percent in dollar [...]

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke made it official this morning: He thinks it would be a good idea for Congress to approve some sort of fiscal stimulus package to aid the ailing U.S. economy this year. And for a guy who tries really hard to avoid taking the sort of political stands that his predecessor Alan [...]