Tag Archive: Economics

Of Course, We All Know Regulatory Uncertainty Is A Myth

June 11, 2013 10:44 pm

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But is regulatory despair?

Nearly all development economists agree that good institutions—legislatures, courts, administrative agencies—are crucial. When poor countries improve their institutions, economic growth soon accelerates. But what about rich countries? If poor countries can get rich by improving their institutions, is it not possible that rich countries can get poor by allowing their institutions to degenerate? I want to suggest that it is.

Consider the evidence from the annual “Doing Business” reports from

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Pouring Socialist Gasoline on the Social Security Fire

April 8, 2013 5:04 pm

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We are getting old. There is simply no way to sugarcoat that. Our country is getting older and the ratio of seniors to workers is increasing. In fact, last year, our childbirth rate edged below replacement level.

I state that at the beginning of the post because that reality seems to escape every pundit who wants to talk about Social Security. They seem to think there is some crazy scheme that will alter the reality … Read more

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The Faux Economist

January 21, 2013 6:39 pm

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Just in case you were wondering if it was only the American sport media that never bothers to fact check:

As an ex-presidential consultant, a former adviser to the World Bank, a financial researcher for the United Nations and a professor in the US, Artur Baptista da Silva’s outspoken attacks on Portugal’s austerity cuts made the bespectacled 61-year-old one of the country’s leading media pundits last year.

The only problem was that Mr Baptista

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Krugman v. Stewart

January 15, 2013 5:02 pm

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Jon Stewart responds to Paul Krugman’s criticism:

I think this exchange perfectly illustrates the debate over the Magic Coin Trick. Krugman wanted to get into nuance and detail and talk about this like it was a classroom exercise without real world consequences. But the value of money is entirely arbitrary, determined … Read more

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California in the Balance

January 12, 2013 12:19 pm

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Well, this is interesting news:

California has been Exhibit A for the fiscal upheaval that has rocked states throughout the recession. Year after year, California officials reported bigger and bigger deficits and sought to respond with spending cuts that left the state reeling.

“The deficit is gone,” Mr. Brown proclaimed, standing in front of an array of that-was-then and this-is-now charts that illustrated what he said were dramatic changes in California’s fortunes.

“For the next

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IOU Nothing

January 11, 2013 10:22 am

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I won’t waste much time on this. A new alternative has been proposed to the $1 trillion coin that is, if anything sillier. It’s that the government should just issue IOU’s. Seriously:

Congressional Republicans have said they will demand immense cuts to popular government programs in exchange for agreeing to raise the nation’s authorized borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion.

Stop right there. I highlighted this sentence in just to show you the author’s delusions. … Read more

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Meet the New Standards, Same as the Old Standards

January 10, 2013 11:21 pm

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Well, knock me over with a feather:

The government is establishing new rules for mortgages that will make it harder for some borrowers to qualify but that are designed to prevent the kind of risky lending that nearly caused the housing market to collapse during the financial crisis.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will roll out the first of several far-reaching changes to the nation’s mortgage market, limiting upfront fees and curtailing

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The Bailouts and the Risk

January 9, 2013 12:25 pm

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It’s Bank Bash time again here at RTFLC. Presented for your consideration: the Atlantic’s expose on how tenuous the banks hold on sanity really is:

The financial crisis had many causes—too much borrowing, foolish investments, misguided regulation—but at its core, the panic resulted from a lack of transparency. The reason no one wanted to lend to or trade with the banks during the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed, was that no one could

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Down Goes Europe

November 15, 2012 10:58 am

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Gulp:

The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday.

The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1

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Economic Populism

November 9, 2012 2:33 pm

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Tim Carney has an interesting take on where the GOP should go from here: economic populism. Now economic populism usually means what Obama practices: spread the wealth around class warfare. But Carney is advocating a different kind of populism:

The new Republican populism shouldn’t blame the “47 percent” of Mitt Romney’s imagination, or immigrants seeking to make a better life. The new Republican populism should declare war on the cronies and special interests who use

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