I already posted on McCain’s gas-tax-holiday proposal. But what about the other things he said in his big economy speech in Pittsburgh today? Here’s my summary of the main points, with my commentary in italics. 1) Jimmy Cayne and Angelo Mozilo are naughty men who got paid lots of money for being naughty. But I’m [...]
So I guess John McCain has decided to write off the subway riders’ (and bicyclists’, and Prius drivers’) vote. In a big economic speech this morning he said: I propose that the federal government suspend all taxes on gasoline now paid by the American people — from Memorial Day to Labor Day of this year. [...]
Arnold Kling writes: My daughter who is a freshman left a message that she wants me to explain macro to her. I can do that, in the sense that I can teach what is in her textbook. In reality, however, macro is a muddle that no one can explain. The undergraduate textbook, a graduate textbook, [...]
Just after 5 p.m. today. That’s right: 102,512 words of popularized-financial-theory fun, not counting voluminous endnotes. I think that’s about 290 standard-size book pages. The last three or four may well be complete gibberish, but who the heck reads that far anyway? So yeah, the blogging ought to be better from here on out.
Here’s something I sure didn’t know, from Business Week’s Michael Mandel: What the government calls “personal consumption” is actually a grab bag of items, some of which don’t really fit the usual notion of consumer spending. For example, the nation’s current annual personal consumption of $10 trillion includes about $1.8 trillion in outlays by Medicare, [...]
My new column is online here and in the issue of Time with Barack Obama’s mama on the cover. It begins: On the last day of April, the folks at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis will announce how much they think the U.S. economy grew–or didn’t–in the first quarter of this year. This [...]
Okay, I know I’ve said this before and it has turned out to be profoundly untrue. But the book has to be done Monday, or there’ll be hell to pay. I’m on track to get it in on time, but I do have some polishing and perfecting (or, if you prefer, slashing and rewriting) still [...]
The new World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report is out, and it ranks Denmark and Sweden as the first and second most-networked economies on earth. No. 3 is Switzerland, which would make you think that the key to networkedness is being a small, rich European country. But then, rocketing up the rankings from seventh [...]
My (free) cup of Pike Place Roast, in Bryant Park You know how all those Suze Orman/Dave Ramsey/David Bach types, when they talk about getting out of debt and saving some money, tend to start by saying you should give up that $4 cup of Starbucks in the morning? Well, Americans appear to be taking [...]
From today’s WSJ: For years the U.S. has been one of the most expensive places in the world to make cars. But the new contracts with the United Auto Workers union signed last fall significantly improve the global competitive position of Big Three plants. The weaker dollar, which makes production in the U.S. less expensive, [...]
