Good news for international readers: Thanks to Google Translate, you can now read this blog in several dozen languages. Just click on the language you want in the box to the right. (For those of you reading this via email, Google Reader, etc., here are some example links: German and Spanish.) P.S. Kudos to the WordPress [...]
Archive for March, 2010
Now Available in Dozens of Languages
Posted in Blog Admin, International, Internet, tagged Blogging, Google, International on March 17, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Greece Starts Selling … But Not Corfu
Posted in Budget, International, tagged Debt, Greece, International on March 17, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Greece is ready to start selling assets, according to the Wall Street Journal, but Corfu and the Parthenon are not on the auction block (no surprise there). Instead, the government figures that by selling its stakes in a bank and a betting company, as well as its share of the national telecommunications company, it can [...]
Is Home Construction Bottoming?
Posted in Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on March 16, 2010 | 12 Comments »
This morning the Census Department released its latest look at housing activity. The headlines are that housing starts fell by 5.9% in February, mostly because of weakness in the Northeast and the South (which may well reflect February’s terrible weather). Most of the decline was in multi-family; single-family starts were essentially unchanged. Although starts and [...]
The Legacy of the Economic Crisis
Posted in International, Macroeconomics, Uncategorized, tagged GDP, International, Macroeconomics, unemployment on March 14, 2010 | 4 Comments »
In its recent Going for Growth report, the OECD concludes that the economic and financial crisis will leave an unwelcome legacy: a permanent reduction in economic activity. This loss averages about 3% of potential GDP across the 20 member countries for which the OECD was able to make these estimates. As the following chart shows, those [...]
Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity
Posted in International, Macroeconomics, tagged GDP, International, Macroeconomics on March 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
This week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released its annual Going for Growth report. The purpose of G4G is to benchmark economic performance among the OECD member countries and suggest pro-growth policy reforms. My favorite chart in the report examines how GDP per capita differs so much across countries: The first column of [...]
Talking About Our Budget Woes
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit on March 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
On Thursday, I appeared on Canada’s Business News Network to discuss our budget woes. Also on the show were Joe Minarik of the Committee for Economic Development and Bill Beach of the Heritage Foundation. The first part of the interview focused on taxes. In a nutshell, my view is that spending restraint won’t be enough [...]
How Much Does the Senate Health Bill Cost?
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health on March 11, 2010 | 16 Comments »
Earlier today the Congressional Budget Office released an updated analysis of the Senate health bill. The update reflects all the amendments that were adopted during Senate consideration of the bill, some technical adjustments, and the assumption that the bill would be enacted in the spring of 2010 (rather than December 2009, as previously assumed). The [...]
Google’s Public Data: Much Improved
Posted in Data, Internet, tagged Data, Google, unemployment, Visualization on March 11, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Google recently released some major improvements in its public data efforts. If you click on over to Public Data, you will find a much broader range of data sets including economic information from the OECD and World Bank, key economic statistics for the United States, and some education statistics for California. Google has also included [...]
What Assets Could the United States Sell?
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt, Greece on March 7, 2010 | 14 Comments »
Several German lawmakers hit a nerve last week with their suggestion that Greece sell some of its assets in order to cut its debts. The German newspaper Bild summarized this line of reasoning quite memorably: “We give you cash, you give us Corfu.” That zinger has prompted a cottage industry of possibly humorous efforts to [...]
Love Wins
Posted in Life, tagged Same-Sex Marriage on March 4, 2010 | 28 Comments »
The photos on the front page of the Washington Post are usually depressing. War, natural disasters, and other tragedies provide a seemingly endless stream of sad or horrifying images. Not so this morning. When I picked up my paper, the images were joyful, depicting happy same-sex couples who were finally able to apply for marriage [...]
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