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Is Offshore Drilling a Realistic Solution?

Like playing with a canker sore, I can’t help checking out the Env-Econ blog. In a recent post, John “I’m funny enough to compensate for my tree-hugging views” Whitehead was urging his readers to go vote against offshore drilling in a poll hosted here. Now if you click that link and check out the context, […]

Why Keynesian Macroeconomics Screws Up Financial Reporting

Sorry for the delay, folks; my power lunch ran longer than expected, and so this post is coming a few hours later than I had intended. I hope it will be worth the wait. One final caveat: This post will be a bit longer and more academic than most, but I really want to get […]

Recession Episode III: The Revenge of Keynes

I have to run to a power lunch* but when I return, I promise to explain why these financial press discussions of recession are absurd. Reading these conventional analyses, you would think that if the dollar just kept falling, and consumers ran up their credit cards to buy DVDs and steak dinners, then we would […]

Six More Join the Gang

Oh great, the Gang of Ten is now the Gang of Sixteen. These terms are thrown around as if they’re funny, when the serious truth is that the entire Congress is a Gang of 535. (Fine fine, Ron Paul fanatics, the Gang of 534.) If you want to see a point-by-point critique of the original […]

"Presumptive": One Down, One to Go

At this point, the press can stop referring to Obama as the “presumptive nominee,” right? It would be interesting to do a graph of how often the word “presumptive” was used in news stories during 2008. I’m guessing there was a bit of a spike in the last few months…

Is Tax-and-Spend Worse than Borrow-and-Spend?

Larry Kudlow interviewed Rudy Giuliani (transcript here), and they naturally started bashing Obama. Here’s Kudlow’s question: Kudlow: [O]ne of the big topics of this program tonight for investors is, are we going to return to a real tax-and-spend approach to economic policy, which was used in the 1970s? As you well know, it caused — […]

Will Dollar Fall Another 40 Percent?

“Jurg Kiener, CEO of Swiss Asia Capital, expects the dollar to lose another 30% – 40% on the dollar index over the next 3 – 4 years.” See the full story. I’m not sure about the specific magnitude of his prediction, but I definitely agree that the dollar still has to slide significantly, in order […]

Are You Rich If You Make $250,000?

Barack Obama has suggested that people making $250,000 are rich, and so can afford to pay higher taxes. Now there are all sorts of quibbles we could raise. For example, if you are a young, single professional, then $250,000 per year allows you to live it up. On the other hand, if you are in […]