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Myyyyy Kind of Town

Carlos Lara and I are headed to an undisclosed location in Chicago, to interview another suite of insurance executives for our forthcoming book. At the last minute I remembered to grab my winter hat before leaving the house. Blogging will probably be sparse until the weekend, unless Obama decides to abolish the Fed or something.

Anthony Gregory on Obama’s First Year

This is really a top-notch job. I don’t have to clone myself because Anthony Gregory is on the scene. There are no shocking revelations in this, but if you want to read a very thorough assessment of the “hope and change” of this past year–and not from a Republican sympathizer by any stretch–I heartily recommend […]

Megan McArdle’s Great Leap Forward Has a Snag

I really wasn’t even going to comment on Megan McArdle’s surprisingly specific recommendation for health reform (HT2MR): Raise the Medicare tax by half a percentage point, and eliminate the tax-deductibiity of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles. Then make the federal government the insurer […]

Regular WSJ Columnist Writes Incredible Article on Gold

…and I don’t mean it as a compliment. I really can’t even begin to describe my feelings on today’s article by Thomas Frank. Here’s an excerpt: Supporters of President Obama like to point to recent TARP-loan payoffs, plus interest, as an example of federal success. His opponents, by and large, have long held that government […]

Peter Schiff on the Minimum Wage

I think most senators talk like this; Schiff would fit right in if he wins. (HT2 von Pepe)

You Get What You Pay For?

Someone help me out here. Krugman discusses a CBO report on government job creation efforts. If you look at the chart he reproduces, you see that the single most effective program of job creation–where the unit of measurement is “Years of Full-Time Equivalent Employment per Million Dollars of Total Budgetary Cost”–is “Increasing Aid to the […]

Big Brother Running EconLog?

I don’t know if it’s because I just upgraded to the new version of Firefox or what, but I just noticed that the browser tabs for EconLog feature a spooky all-seeing eye. Is that like Total Economics Awareness or something?

PPI "Flat"–Producer Prices Only Rose 4.4% in 2009

Naturally the headlines all say that the latest reading from the Labor Department on producer prices was flat, by which they mean that if you strip out food and energy prices, the other ones didn’t rise from November to December. Overall, the Producer Price Index rose 4.4% during 2009. So at what point will the […]