As recently as last fall, the mantra in the Bush administration was that the federal deficit, at 1.2% of GDP in FY 2007 and 1.9% in FY 2006, was smaller than the average of the previous 40 years. It was a true statement, although the choice of 40 years was interesting. If you’d gone with [...]
Remember a few weeks ago when Justin spent some time playing with Fed data on home mortgage lending and made us this nice chart? And he wrote: The basic picture is pretty clear: Fannie and Freddie [i.e., GSEs, or government-sponsored enterprises] have dominated U.S. mortgage lending since the early 1980s—except from 2004 through 2006, when [...]
Given the current slump in oil prices it’s a bit ill-timed, but the people at Clingendael, the Dutch equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations, have a new report out arguing that: Until recently, the oil price was largely underpinned by the marginal cost of the last barrel needed to match demand, with some political [...]
