Category: Economics
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Gas-Guzzler Tax: Just Turn it On
Some years ago, in one of the few instances where the NYT actually published one of my letters, I ranted about how we should institute a heavy tax on low-efficiency vehicles. To the Editor: Gregg Easterbrook’s proposal for a 50-cent-a-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax (”The 50-Cent-a-Gallon Solution,” Op-Ed, May 25) is absolutely on…
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Food Stamps as Fiscal Stimulus?
Megan McArdle, in an uncharacteristically badly-reasoned (and really rather mean-spirited) post, ridicules an increase in food-stamp benefits as a fiscal stimulus measure. I responded in her comments, but I’m so inordinately proud of my response that I can’t resist posting it here: Geez, Megan, I’m sorry but that ranks as one of the lamer posts…
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The Long Decline in Equities
Megan McArdle ridicules an analysis that looks at stock market returns adjusted for the dollar’s value (based on a basket of currencies). Short story, by that measure investors have been big losers (chart) over the last seven years. The author uses it to bash Bush’s "ownership society." Megan, who seems to be responding more to…
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When to Use Fiscal Stimulus
Dang it all, but Greg Mankiw does have me going this week. Guy’s got a fine mind, want to see him applying it more acutely. Yesterday he pointed to Alan Blinder’s 2004 The Case Against the Case Against Discretionary Fiscal Policy (PDF), wherein Blinder gives three possible reasons to use fiscal stimulus (note the “or’…
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We Knew That Already
Greg Mankiw cites a citation of a 1994 paper analyzing fiscal and monetary responses to recessions. From the abstract: …Federal Reserve typically responds to downturns with prompt and large reductions in interest rates. Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, rarely reacts before the trough in economic activity, and even then the responses are usually small. ……
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Gretchen Morgenson Underdoes Herself
In today’s column, one the our best watchdogging financial journalists takes an odd analytical tack–toward not terribly important news. She gets all excited about the returns calculator provided by FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority)–as she should. It has a database of the funds, so you can easily pull post-fee returns comparisons and graphs for different…
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Is Fiscal Stimulus Just Stupid?
Greg Mankiw uses rhetorical questions to argue that the government should not be using fiscal stimulus to prevent a recession. He asks (in my words): If monetary policy is the strongest lever, and if fiscal stimulus limits the Fed’s monetary options–ties their hands–why are we considering fiscal stimulus? But he’s posing it as a zero-sum…
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Mankiw Goes Off the Cuff
Greg Mankiw is a widely and justifiably respected economist. But sometimes in his blog he prattles on just like the rest of us, absent the empirics that he should be bringing to the party. So here. He ridicules the CBO for even bothering to analyze a temporary increase in food stamp benefits to effect short-term…
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“You Deserve It”
I’m one of the lucky ones, even by American standards. My business partner and I built a company in the ’90s that created and ran professional conferences covering web design, web marketing, web advertising, and other frenzied subjects of the day. We were selling Levis to the gold miners. And we were lucky enough to…