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Clash of the Think Tank Titans

The National Association of Manufacturers puts out an estimate of the economic impacts of Waxman-Markey (cap & trade)… The “Wonk Room” at ThinkProgress (Yglesias’ stomping ground) puts a rosy spin on it… The wonks at IER put a dandelion spin on it… Excerpt from the IER rebuttal: Because of this natural trend for secular growth, […]

Strong Demand for Treasurys? Or Is This Another Lesson in Fungibility?

CNBC announces the strong demand in the 30-year Treasury auction today. I bet I can guess what Chris Martenson’s going to be working on next week…

Dear Prudence

Buckling to pressure from a certain critic–who was concerned more for more consistency rather than blogosphere modesty, I believe–I believe I have filtered out the absurd Evony ads. It actually is a lot easier to filter Google ads than I thought. What clinched it for me was the realization that if I’m going to write […]

Oh Wait, Maybe the Recession Isn’t Over After All

CNBC reports with apparent surprise: Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly fell in July and the number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week, indicating the recession-hit economy faced a bumpy recovery. A Commerce Department report Thursday showed total retail sales edged down 0.1 percent after increasing 0.8 percent in June, compared […]

What Letter Will the Recovery Look Like? U-Shaped?

Someone please make it stop. People have been arguing for months over a V-shaped versus a U-shaped recovery–as if there were some scientific propositions behind each theory. And now, CNBC runs an article talking about a W-shaped recovery and a triple-U-shaped recovery. My guess? A lowercase z–in cursive.

The Best Goldman Apology Yet

LRC reprints a pretty funny Matt Taibbi article where he (with some vulgarity) responds to a Slate defense of Goldman Sachs: So, gosh, I stand corrected, I guess. Because I thought that Goldman made a ton of money this year because it got a special waiver (fast-forwarding through the usual five-day antitrust waiting period, thanks […]

Alanis Morissette Did That on (Canadian) Television

Somehow over pitchers and wings we managed to bring up You Can’t Do That on Television the other night. (“Daaaa I heeeeard that!”) One member of our elite group remarked that if you watch clips of the show now, the Canadian accents are striking, whereas that was never something I had noticed as a kid. […]

New Inflation Numbers Coming, But the Orwellians Are Working

It’s almost crunch time! By early next week the new PPI and CPI numbers for July will be out. I have been warning for months that actual prices are rising much more quickly than you would realize, had you simply relied on the official reports coming out of the BLS. I explained that after last […]