Tag: Economics

It’s a very good country for the rich man. Chauffeurs, servants, big houses. The question is, who is suffering? The common man.

This is the tax policy that DC elites, Republicans and Democrats, want to see adopted.

I on the other hand favor moderate, mainstream, FDR tax rates of 90% on marginal income; and if corporations have the right to speak like individuals they have the right to be taxed like them too.

Who wants to be long on a July weekend anyway sucker?

1 Moody’s downgrades Ireland debt rating

AFP

2 hrs 2 mins ago

Ireland has gladly adopted a strong austerity policy.  This is what happens.

(T)here’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:

… Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?

Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence. I’ve looked hard at the arguments the Pain Caucus is making, the evidence that supposedly supports their case – and there’s no there there.

And you just have to wonder how it’s possible to have lived through the last ten years and still imagine that because a lot of Serious People believe something, you should believe it too. Iraq? Housing bubble? Inflation?

…

The moral I’ve taken from recent years isn’t Be Humble – it’s Question Authority. And you should too.

This is the first installment of what I hope is going to be a regular Monday feature.

I always find it instructive to keep track of the money since I think it explains a lot about politics.

There are 2 major interrelated economic stories moving in the background.  One is the question of stimulus and the recovery of the ‘Main Street’ economy and the other is the question of deficit reduction and austerity particularly related to Social Security.

What relates these 2 stories is the abandonment by modern economists of Keynesianism.  If you haven’t already, you should really read Krugman’s How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? from September of 2009 where he describes the irrational theories of the two main trends of academic economics, the salt and freshwater schools.

To me ignoring the proven facts of Keynesian Economics makes about as much sense as a biologist rejecting the ‘Theory’ of Evolution and Genetics.  I suppose it’s possible to do good and rigorously academically grounded work but you’re really rejecting everything that makes your ‘science’ umm… ‘scientific’, which is to say predictive of measurable future results.

Just because your second derivative (in the calculus sense) quant guy can give you a value for the change in the slope of a curve doesn’t make it anything but mathematical masturbation unless your model bears some relation to reality.

Anyway, below you will find some stories I’ve collected from the Business section of Yahoo News.  Just because some of these guys are rich doesn’t mean any of them are smart.

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

1 India rocked by strike over fuel prices

by Giles Hewitt, AFP

1 hr 14 mins ago