The much-maligned TARP program will cost taxpayers only $25 billion according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s substantially less than the $66 billion CBO estimated back in August or the $113 billion that the Office of Management and Budget estimated in October. The good news, budget-wise, is that the government is [...]
Archive for November, 2010
How Much Did TARP Cost? $25 Billion
Posted in Budget, Finance, tagged AIG, Auto, Banks, Budget, CBO, Finance, TARP on November 29, 2010 | 15 Comments »
Is Housing Messing Up Inflation Measures? Yes, But …
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Federal Reserve, Housing, Inflation, Macroeconomics, Money on November 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Here’s the simplest argument in favor of the Fed’s decision to restart quantitative easing: The economy remains very weak. Unemployment, for example, is still almost 10%, and the underemployment rate is close to 17%. Key inflation measures are exceptionally low. The core consumer price index (CPI), for example, is up only 0.6% over the past [...]
How Do Entrepreneurs Operate in Afghanistan?
Posted in International, tagged Afghanistan, Entrepreneurship, Incentives, International, Transaction Cost Economics on November 26, 2010 | 4 Comments »
“Uncertainty, not insecurity, is the fundamental problem for business” in Afghanistan according to a new study by Jake Cusack and Erik Malmstrom at the Center for a New American Security (ht: Zach W.). In “Afghanistan’s Willing Entrepreneurs: Supporting Private-Sector Growth in the Afghan Economy,” they report: In national surveys, insecurity ranks at the top of [...]
Thanksgiving Reading
Posted in Business, Microeconomics, Nature, Politics, Technology, tagged Microeconomics, OpenTable, Politics, Tragedy of the Commons, Voting on November 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
So many fascinating economic issues, so little time to blog. Here are some of the fun items that I would have discussed in recent days if I had infinite time: How OpenTable uses its market power. Over at Incanto, Mark Pastore describes how OpenTable uses its dominant position in online restaurant reservations to get as much [...]
Economics in Action: Is Groupon Worth It?
Posted in Microeconomics, tagged Business, Microeconomics on November 23, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Over at the New York Times You’re the Boss blog, Jay Goltz provides a great example of economic reasoning (ht: Jack B). His topic: how should small businesses think about the costs and benefits of participating in daily coupon sites like Groupon? Participants can see big spikes in traffic, at the expense of slashed margins. Is [...]
Quantitative Easing, Trading, and the Viral Bunnies
Posted in Macroeconomics, tagged Federal Reserve, Humor, Macroeconomics, Money on November 20, 2010 | 6 Comments »
When Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve announced their plan for $600 billion in new quantitative easing, I am sure they expected criticism. Angela Merkel? No surprise. Hu Jintao? Ditto. Domestic inflation hawks? Ditto again. But could the Fed have anticipated that its most vocal critics would be a pair of talking [...]
Yet Another New Low in Houses Under Construction
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on November 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Today’s Census data show another decline in the number of single-family houses under construction: In short, completions are still outrunning starts.
The Distributional Effects of the Bowles-Simpson Tax Proposal
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit, Taxes on November 16, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Today Eric Toder and Daniel Baneman of the Tax Policy Center released a preliminary analysis of the tax proposal put forward by the fiscal commission’s co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. The centerpiece of their proposal is to eliminate almost all tax expenditures* except the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit and use the [...]
Cleaning Up the Tax Code and 15 Other Ways to Cut the Deficit
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit, Taxes on November 15, 2010 | 3 Comments »
In conjunction with its new deficit option game, the New York Times asked 16 budgeteers to write-up ideas for reducing the deficit. My assignment was to explain the rationale for reducing tax expenditures–the exclusions, exemptions, deductions, and credits that complicate the code and dramatically reduce the revenue that it raises: The Office of Management and [...]
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