Where are the foreclosures?
Month: October 2010
The Election Campaign Con Game: “Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves”
Continuing a series to help voters and everybody else cut through the nonsense, lies, garbage, and con games that has become American electoral campaigns – at least with respect to economics. The claim up for consideration now is the claim that by cutting taxes now (particularly for the wealthy, very high income earners, capital income … Continue reading The Election Campaign Con Game: “Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves”
The Election Campaign Con Game: “Cut the Deficit”
Here's a series of posts in the next couple days to try to help voters and everybody else cut through the nonsense, lies, garbage, and con games that has become American electoral campaigns - at least with respect to economics. A lot of electoral campaigns have increasingly come to resemble common con games such as … Continue reading The Election Campaign Con Game: “Cut the Deficit”
Social Security: Will It Be There? Presentation
I'm giving an open lecture/presentation at the college today on the future viability of Social Security and the crisis rhetoric surrounding it. It's available to view or download here: Powerpoint file Download (no sound). Sorry, there's no sound yet, but I am planning to record the lecture and post either an MP3 of it or make … Continue reading Social Security: Will It Be There? Presentation
Crowding Out Not Gonna Happen Soon
With unemployment hovering near 10% for nearly two years now, it should be obvious that the economy is no where near capacity. Yet, many on Wall Street and in the talking-head TV shows continue to maintain that government borrowing is "crowding out" private investment (or going to soon). Um, I don't think so. Crowding out … Continue reading Crowding Out Not Gonna Happen Soon
Why the Deficit Increased
The deficit increased over the last 2 years, but it wasn't because of any "surge" or "explosion" in government spending. It was because the real economy, which generates the tax revenues, collapsed because of a financial crisis, as the following graph shows. It wasn't an increase in govt spending. Spending continued to increase at the … Continue reading Why the Deficit Increased
Leadership FAIL: Again
This time I'll outsource the job to Paul Krugman at the New York Times. I don't always agree with Paul, but he's spot on with this. The Obama administration never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity, especially if it involves banks. Epitaph For An Administration In today’s report on the foreclosure mess, a revealing sentence: … Continue reading Leadership FAIL: Again
CPI: Deflation Watch
The September Consumer Price Index numbers are out. Inflation is really a sustained general increase in the level of all prices. Since the price index itself can be rather noisy, varying a lot from month-to-month, many economists use some different techniques to smooth out the trend to see what the "sustained" action really is. Three … Continue reading CPI: Deflation Watch
Distribution of Wealth: Reality vs. Ignorance
Americans of all persuasions, right and left, progressive and conservative, apparently actually want the same distribution of wealth. We want to be like Sweden. Yes, the "socialist" Sweden. But, we don't know that and we don't agree on policies because we don't accurately perceive what the current distribution of wealth. A fascinating study by behavioral … Continue reading Distribution of Wealth: Reality vs. Ignorance
more Bankers: FAIL
Yves Smith at naked Capitalism tells us of a case where Wells Fargo Bank (which acquired Wachovia 2 years ago), foreclosed and evicted a homeowner for failing to make payments. Then Wells sold the foreclosed house at auction to a new owner. Then Wells attempted to foreclose on the new owner for alleged failure to … Continue reading more Bankers: FAIL
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