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If Only We Were Swedenizing
In President Barack Obama’s Election Night and inaugural speeches, he made it clear there would be no centrist pivot in his second term. Forward, 51 percent of my fellow Americans, to a more...
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No to the Flat Tax and Other Stale Ideas
Free enterprise, free markets, competition, and choice: All are timeless economic principles, but their application can and should evolve with changing economic circumstances. When Ronald Reagan was...
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Cut, Tax, and Pray
Don’t kid yourself: President Obama understands the math. He knows federal finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory. His Office of Management and Budget produces the same scary debt charts...
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End the GOP Attacks on the Fed
Senator Bob Corker, a wealthy businessman, is one of the savviest Republicans on all things financial. Before passage of the Dodd-Frank banking-reform law, the Tennessee Republican worked with...
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For Republicans, Time to Think Ahead
Here’s a scary thought for the already demoralized Republican party: If consensus economic forecasts are correct — and of course that’s always a big if — the 2016 Democratic nominee will appear to have...
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Dropping the GOP’s Green Eyeshades
At the Republican National Committee’s annual meeting in January, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana called Republicans the “stupid party.” At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he...
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Too Big to Fail Is Too Good to Resist
The U.S. Senate rarely votes unanimously on anything of much importance. The Obama White House, though, managed to bring this about: Last May, a clone of its previous year’s budget proposal failed...
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Resisting the ‘New Normal’
Let’s be optimistic and assume the U.S. economy grew 3 percent in the first quarter, adjusted for inflation (vs. 0.4 percent in last year’s fourth quarter, as the Commerce Department reported last...
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Who Lost the American Worker?
Who lost the American worker? If the anemic employment recovery since the Great Recession’s end doesn’t prompt that question, perhaps the painful March jobs report finally will. Some context: If the...
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Tax Cuts Aren't Everything
April 15 is Tax Day in America. But it seems like every day is Tax Day on the right. Activists, policymakers, and wonks devote an incredible amount of thought and energy to fighting tax-hike efforts...
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Battle of the Econ Pundits
Water boils at 212 degrees, a fact that everyone learns in grammar-school science class if not earlier at home. There is a minor complication: Water boils at different temperatures depending on the...
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The Upside of Economic Pessimism
The disappointing first-quarter GDP report dashed hopes that 2013 might prove a breakout year for the U.S. economy. Even worse, the same-old-same-old anemic results provide another disturbing data...
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Ferguson’s Blooper on Keynes
It was an unusually feisty weekend in corners of the blogosphere and Twitterverse where dwell economists and economic-policy wonks. But the surprising April jobs report wasn’t the hot topic. Instead,...
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The IRS and Big Government
The expanding Internal Revenue Service scandal could hardly be any more Drudgeriffic. Well, maybe if in addition to singling out groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, the agency had...
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Bernanke’s Much-Needed Optimism
Federal Reserve chairman Ben BernankeIt’s hardly an encouraging sign of a nation’s economic vitality when its most optimistic policymakers are its central bankers. They’re supposed to be the...
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Fix, Don’t Flatten, the Tax Code
If the sluggish U.S. economy wasn’t reason enough for tax reform, the ongoing IRS scandal demonstrates how a devilishly complex tax code enables government mischief.But the flat tax — a longtime policy...
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Welcome to the Recovery: Year Five
Job fair in Portland, Ore.Happy fourth anniversary, America. June 2009 marked the official end of the Great Recession — as reckoned by the National Bureau of Economic Research — and the beginning of...
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The Bernanke Difference
Fed chairman Ben BernankeThe mild May jobs report should serve as yet another reminder to President Obama and Congress that the U.S. labor market is suffering a Long Emergency. A smaller share of the...
View ArticleBattle of the Econ Pundits
Water boils at 212 degrees, a fact that everyone learns in grammar-school science class if not earlier at home. There is a minor complication: Water boils at different temperatures depending on the...
View ArticleThe Upside of Economic Pessimism
The disappointing first-quarter GDP report dashed hopes that 2013 might prove a breakout year for the U.S. economy. Even worse, the same-old-same-old anemic results provide another disturbing data...
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