Public Investment Goods
I've said it (a billion times) before, and I'll say it again: government spending is essential for economic growth. That doesn't...
Life Imitates Old Testament
Lines on a map
The West is going blue . Colorado and New Mexico have been there for a couple years now, thanks to shifting demographics (liberal white peop...
McCain's final turd fling
As John McCain teeters, tumbles, and falls into the abyss of political irrelevance, he reaches out to fling one last turd at the reality-bas...
Ed Prescott unleashed
Bad logic on unions
Matt Yglesias writes: [W]hen you hear about the evils of EFCA recall that when unionization rates were higher in the first half of the post...
Are we a conservative nation?
Yglesias and Krugman are not very impressed with a Newsweek editorial that claims that America is a center-right country . But it's ha...
Whither the Republic(ans)?
Bad bets
Nate Silver has uncovered a "rogue trader" trying to manipulate the Intrade presidential election futures markets. The trader has...
Krugman is right, but...
Krugman sayeth : [T]his is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. Th...
Yglesias sums it up
Matt Yglesias gets what for me might as well be the last word on the "New Narrative": [I]t seems to me that the Republicans were ...
Oh yeah? Well you like ICE CREAM! :P
Ry wrote to notify me of this : A local California GOP women’s organization’s most recent newsletter claims that if Obama is elected, his fa...
A Bresh of Freth Air
GOPuh-leeze
The two biggest Republican talking points on the air right now are A) the "New Narrative", and B) the idea that ACORN is committin...
New Narration
Given our continuing economic troubles, it's no surprise that the "New Narrative" (that the crisis was caused by stupid minori...
Swingers
Ezra Klein continues on his crusade to prove there are very few real "swing voters." He writes: Examining the 2004 election, [res...
Noah Smith, chief advisor to the McCain campaign
Interesting fact: the McCain economic plan for government purchase of mortgages was suggested by me on 9/26. Of course, that was when the ...
Fresh-breaking news from my swivel-chair
The McCain campaign appears to have undergone a fundamental shift. It seems the campaign is no longer about winning, it's about looking ...
Semper ubi sub ubi
Maureen Dowd asserts that America is following in the downward footsteps of the Roman Empire . The writing may be silly, but the thesis is a...
Awwwwww yeah
Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize in economics . Yes, that Paul Krugman. Now, he won it for his theory of "economic geography,"...
Investment - an economic paradigm for liberals
Liberals need an economic philosophy other than "take money from the rich and give it to the poor." We used to have a great one: i...
Talent Diversion
A couple years ago, a friend of mine complained that the finance industry was sucking up way too much of our top talent. Instead of a lonely...
Race and the race, cont.
Good for John McCain
If Sarah Palin's speeches are any indicator, the McCain campaign has decided to go all-out with the "Obama is a scary outsider"...
Race and the race, cont.
Here's some more excerpts from that same George Packer article on Ohio swing voters : “I think the party-line Democrats are having a har...
Noah's conservative rant
Ezra Klein calls George Packer's essay on Ohio swing voters " deeply moving [and] deeply sad ." The article basically ignore...
Crisis (of faith) averted
A couple weeks ago, conservatives were having a crisis of faith. The economy was heading into free fall, and everyone was saying it was dere...
Strange moments in Nobel Prize history
White power on the march
I were stupid
I've been going around saying that Obama needs Ohio, Virginia, or Florida, to win - that just getting Colorado would be enough. Turns ou...
The Bush Boom
John McCain IS 1980s action cinema
Not only is John McCain's name just one consonant away from "John McClane" of the Die Hard movies, but now FP Passport brings...
Good writing outsourced
I'm outsourcing all my opinions for the day to Francis Fukuyama, who has written an excellent summary of where we are as a nation . If y...
Obamaconomists
At a convention this weekend, I remarked on how unusual it is these days to find a politically conservative economist ("Yeah," my ...
