I listened to Intelligence Squared* while the kids played on a parking lot snow mountain. The topic was “Are Obama’s Economic Policies Working Effectively?” The format of the show is a 2 team, 6 person (position statement) debate.
On the pro-Obama side were a current administration official, a former [...]
It would be a graduated [...]
1) Paul Krugman: Would cutting the minimum wage raise employment?:
Serious People (and Fox News) are rallying around the idea that if Obama really wants to create jobs, he should cut the minimum wage.... [R]educing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually [...]
Jon Stewart's take on the bank CEOs missing the meeting with President Obama ...As you know, I agree:
The Monkey Cage: What We Have Learned from the Health Care Debate: [R[]eporters start in with “news analysis” like this silliness from John Broder in Sunday’s New York Times. Here, climate change is framed around what Obama can or cannot accomplish, complete with portentous [...]
President Obama thinks insulation is sexy stuff. It saves money. But it also costs at least $23 billion dollars. And that's already on top of “Cash for Clunkers” which cost at least $3 billion dollars, though no one knows for sure."We Need a Housing Bubble" Krugman got a Nobel in Economics. "Let's Ramp Up a Murderous, Useless War" Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. So what do we give Helicopter Ben Bernanke, who has squandered much of whatever capital we had left after the housing bubble burst by pushing [...]
A Dr. Joel Harrison takes aim at Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey’s reasons for rejecting Obamacare. (HT Kristi Kendall) Dr. Harrison’s aim is poor. Here I address one of his off-target claims, to wit:
[Mackey proposes] Repealing mandates on what insurance must cover & state laws which prevent insurance companies [...]
"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," President Obama told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. In a narrow sense, that may be true. But Obama did run for office in part to keep the unemployment rate from rising to -- [...]
FELIX SALMON quotes Barack Obama saying:
This is something I hear about from business owners and entrepreneurs across America — that despite [...]
"My main message in today's meeting was very simple: that America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry and now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy," President Obama said after the meeting.
In the' [...]
Barack Obama wants the banks to start lending again:
This is something I hear about from business owners and entrepreneurs across America — that despite their best efforts, they're unable to get loans.
I would love to see some empirical data on this, because I suspect that insofar as lending volumes' [...]
This evening at 7pm ET:Last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes, President Obama attacked Wall Street as “fat cats,” saying he was not elected merely for their sake. Obviously, the President is now keenly aware of how his political capital is being lost due to the bailout program earlier in the year. He is [...]
How incompetent is Citigroup? Incompetent enough that even today, when the bank is announcing a major agreement with the government to pay back its TARP money, neither its chairman nor its CEO was able to turn up to a meeting with the president of the United States of America.
The [...]
Mr. Volcker has become quite vocal lately. Be sure to check out the interview he has with Der Spiegel and in Monday’s WSJ:
Der Spiegel:
SPIEGEL: As chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, you advise President Barack Obama on how to prevent such a recurrence. Is he following your guidance?
Volcker: [...]
It's hard to know how seriously one is supposed to take a Matt Taibbi who begins:
Obama's Big Sellout: Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed [...]
Many people have been wondering whether Democratic plans to force individuals to buy health insurance can withstand constitutional scrutiny given that in this country we are supposed to have a government of limited and enumerated powers. But the constitution's commerce clause gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. And [...]
Barack Obama has said, "I will not rest until all Americans who want to work can." Yet Mr. Obama's policies belie his words. In fact, what his administration is doing will ensure economic stagnation. FULL ARTICLE by Benjamin Weingarten
[...]On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled a plan to use repaid TARP monies to fund a job creation program. The question is, can the government actually create jobs?
Initially, one would say yes. If the government hires more workers, this is job creation. If the government hires more contractors, this is [...]
Image: Daily Mirror
Tiger Woods has been yanked off primetime TV, but that hasn’t stopped the folks at Golf Digest to run an issue with Woods on the cover. The accompanying article? “10 Tips Obama Can Take from Tiger.”
OK, so it’s not [...]
[Tirta Susilo is a PhD student in psychology, and a co-author of mine on a recent study, published in (appropriately enough) the Journal of Economic Psychology. Tirta has written a guest-post on some fascinating new research about skin colour and politics.]
Earlier this year Andrew Leigh and I observed that [...]
