Remember all those green energy initiatives the Obama administration has been touting? Well, it turns out that we probably would’ve been better off if we’d just burned the cash. Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s stimulus and green jobs initiatives, but instead it has become the center of […]
A federal judge has given the Interior Department 30 days to fish or cut bait on issuing drilling permits.
Congratulations America, if there was any doubt that you’d elected pretty, fawning airheaded sycophant as president, then this morning’s release of his proposed fiscal 2012 budget should make it obvious. When the hand-picked Democrat chairman of your deficit reduction commission characterizes your budget as going “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve […]
The Congressional Budget Office released its 10-year budget outlook last week. For 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws remain unchanged, the federal budget will show a deficit of close to $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of GDP. The deficits in CBO's baseline projections drop markedly over the next few years […]
Last week, The Washington Post reported that food prices are going up and some countries are making moves to protect their supplies and keep prices under control. Faced with rising international food prices, governments around the world are cooking up measures to protect domestic supplies and keep a lid on prices at home. Russia has […]
UPDATE 3 Important, additional information has surfaced. Please read this follow-up post. I distinctly remember back in the mid-to-late 90s seeing an ad in The Daily World in Aberdeen, Wash. – the paper I worked for – advertising some sort of public assistance for the poor. Why did I remember this particular ad? Because I […]
If you think little changes can solve this, your name is Paul Krugman. In other economic news: “Surprisingly,” the unemployment rate climbs to 9.8 percent and if the tax cuts aren’t extended before the lame duck session ends, expect the market to tank.
I’ve mentioned before that I think Moody’s economist Mark Zandi is a snake oil salesman for his “model” that says for every $1 you spend on unemployment insurance you get $1.63 of economic activity. If that’s the case, everyone should go on unemployment. Over at The Big Picture, someone has used a good ol’ Lexis/Nexis […]
I mentioned economist Richard Barro’s work a month ago in the context of the ludicrous claim that a $1 of unemployment insurance spurs $1.63 of economic activity. Barro is back today with another op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the tricky subject of unemployment insurance. Here’s the key number: To get a rough quantitative […]
Here’s a graph from the CBO on the Bush era federal deficits and Iraq War spending. A couple of things to note: First, note the trendline until we get to the TARP bailout, etc. in 2008. Second, the Obama administration stimulus plan added more to the deficit than all the Iraq War spending combined.