My thinking is no. But since it’s a question that a lot of people may be asking over the next few days, it is worth exploring. Summers was an awfully controversial guy a couple years ago. And the things that made him controversial will all be revisited if he has to sit through a Senate confirmation hearing.
Here’s a quick run-through of …
Let’s be clear about this: Barack Obama isn’t going to raise your taxes in 2009. He already said back in September, before the severity of the current economic downturn was apparent, that he would probably hold off on rescinding the Bush tax cuts on high-income households because of the fragility of the economy. In October, his campaign …
So now we get a presidential transition, one that is likely–given the fragile state of the financial system and the economy–to pose challenges unlike any we’ve seen in decades. Challenges similar, although as yet far less severe, to those that faced Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt during the long, horrible handoff of 1932 and …
1. Barack Obama. Obviously.
2. Sasha and Malia. They get a puppy. They also get (up to) eight years of unceasing scrutiny. But still: a puppy!
3. Nate Silver. His FiveThirtyEight gave a much better sense of how this election would play out than any other media outlet. Of course, now he’ll go and get the next election totally wrong. For …
Because it is required of bloggers to declare that they voted and tell how long the line was, I hereby declare that I voted and that the line outside the P.S. 166 polling place in Manhattan was at 10:15 a.m. longer than I’ve ever seen it (stretching about half of a very wide Upper West Side block), but that getting from the end of the …
The WSJ has an article this morning reporting that Treasury is now looking into buying stakes in
a broad range of financial companies, … including bond insurers and specialty finance firms such as General Electric Co.’s GE Capital unit, CIT Group Inc. and others …
That’s interesting. But here’s what’s really interesting:
Treasury
…
Lots of news organizations offer assessments of whether or not we’re in a recession, or advice on what to do if we are. Here at the Curious Capitalist we focus on the really important stuff–like what shape the recession will be. Together with TIME.com graphics czar Feilding Cage, I have assembled a groundbreaking gallery of potential …
In the first days after the Great TIME.com Blog Crash of 2008, the Curious Capitalist temporarily lost its past. Now the hardworking geniuses at TIME.com have restored the archives. Not just all the posts but all your comments (excluding any comments left back when this blog lived at CNNMoney, but those were lost long ago). And links to …
General Motors would like some taxpayer cash—a bit more than $10 billion should do—to help it buy Chrysler. As a company spokesman told TIME: “We believe the Federal government should consider all of the tools available to it—some recently enacted—to support industries that are in distress and that are essential to the U.S. …
Andrew Samwick (inspired by today’s Krugman column) says he told us so:
What we should have done back in January is to start planning for a future in which the consumers, finally, would sensibly retreat (not capitulate) from their debt-laced consumption rampage. Some people [Samwick, that is] were suggesting the following in
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My new column is up online and in the magazine with McCain and Obama on the cover, together for perhaps one last time. It begins:
In 2002 the inimitably audacious editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal brought to the nation’s attention the existence of a vast and allegedly pernicious class of “lucky duckies” who pay no federal
…
Okay, so I totally missed this. Here’s Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore, talking to the New York Post’s Keith Kelly a little over a week ago:
Moore pointed to the recent Time cover story, “How Wall Street Sold Out America,” which was written by Fortune magazine’s top editor, Andy Serwer, and noted economic and Fortune columnist Allan Sloan.
That
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