links for 2009-07-11
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it’s NOT because they think a solid recovery is on the way. On the contrary, their outlook is quite bleak: on average, the surveyed economists expect unemployment to rise to 10 percent, still be 10 percent in June 2010, and fall only to 9.5 percent by the end of 2010. And a fair number of the forecasters — including Jan Hatzius of Goldman, whose analysis I follow closely, and has been spot on so far — think that unemployment will actually rise through 2010. So they’re not saying that everything’s OK, no stimulus needed. They’re saying that they don’t like stimulus. And why should you be surprised? These are business economists; they’re generally conservative.
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Two weeks before election day in 1950, the Republican Senatorial candidate in California--Richard M. Nixon--accused the Democratic Senatorial candidate in California--Helen Gahagan Douglas--of being the conduit through which the decisions made by Josef Stalin in the Kremlin flowed to the United States Congress: "This action by Mrs. Douglas," Nixon explained, "... came just two weeks after [U.S. Communist Party leader] William Z. Foster transmitted his instructions from the Kremlin to the Communist national committee.... [Thus] this [Communist] demand found its way into the Congress" (Mitchell (1998), p. 209).
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The health reform debate would be a lot simpler if the kind of center-of-center politicians inclined to worry about spending too much money were also inclined to support the kind of government intervention into the health care system that’s likely to reduce health care costs. But instead, the left finds itself needing to argue both sides of the issue against forces of the status quo who both object to the cost of giving people health care and object to cost-saving measures like a robust public plan. And the House Blue Dog Caucus is no exceptio
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He tears Dana Milbank of the Washington Post into shreds and gobbets, and then eats the gobbets...
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The data shows that an increasing percentage of those without jobs stay unemployed for longer periods of time, while a falling share experience relatively shorter spells of unemployment...
