Since the day of Alexander Hamilton, the United States has never defaulted on the federal debt. That’s what we budget-watchers always say. It’s a great talking point. One that helps bolster the argument that default should not be an option in Washington’s ongoing debt limit slowdown. There’s just one teensy problem: it isn’t true. As [...]
Archive for May, 2011
The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills
Posted in Budget, tagged Debt, Debt Limit, Default, Deficit, Treasury on May 26, 2011 | 35 Comments »
Cut Spending by Raising Taxes
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit, Taxes on May 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
My latest column at the Christian Science Monitor argues that we can cut spending by raising taxes: Here’s a shocker: America can cut government spending by eliminating tax breaks. I know that sounds crazy. Everyone usually talks as if spending and tax breaks are distinct. Spending is what the government gives out or uses for [...]
Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse
Posted in Life, Uncategorized, tagged Emergency, Humor, Zombie on May 19, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The Centers for Disease Control offers emergency preparedness tips with a sense of humor: So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the [...]
Congestion Pricing Saves Time and Money
Posted in Budget, Energy, Environment, Microeconomics, tagged CBO, Infrastructure, Pricing, Taxes, Transportation on May 18, 2011 | 4 Comments »
The Highway Trust Fund will soon be broke. Gasoline tax revenues haven’t kept up with spending, and it’s likely that demands for new highway infrastructure will grow in the future. Joseph Kile, head of the microeconomics studies division at the Congressional Budget Office, discussed various policy options to deal with this funding gap in his testimony [...]
Moral Hazard, Pakistan Edition
Posted in Budget, International, tagged Incentives, International, Moral Hazard, Pakistan on May 17, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The United States can’t pursue al Qaeda alone. We need help from other nations. To encourage nations to provide that help, the U.S. created the Coalition Support Fund to reimburse coalition partners for the costs they incur fighting terrorism. As Adam Entous reports in the WSJ, the prospect for such “reimbursement” creates an obvious incentive: our partners may exaggerate how [...]
Debt Limit: Routine or the End of the World?
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Debt, Deficit, Humor, Politics on May 14, 2011 | 1 Comment »
ht: Bruce Bartlett
Zanran: Google for Data?
Posted in Data, Economy, Internet, tagged Data, Google, Search, Wolfram Alpha, Zanran on May 13, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Zanran is a new search engine, now in beta testing, that focuses on charts and tables. As its website says: Zanran helps you to find ‘semi-structured’ data on the web. This is the numerical data that people have presented as graphs and tables and charts. For example, the data could be a graph in a [...]
Incentives and Property Rights, Dead Raccoon Edition
Posted in Life, Nature, tagged Incentives, Life, Nature, Property Rights on May 9, 2011 | 9 Comments »
It seems like only yesterday that I met Rocky. Probably because it was yesterday. Our smallest cat Caramel was staring intently upward. Following his gaze, I spied Rocky tucked between two branches high in the silver maple near our deck. Rocky didn’t look well. Raccoons aren’t usually out and about at 3:00 on a sunny [...]
Uncertainty Still Reigns in the Latest Blogger Word Cloud
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on May 9, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). My favorite feature is a word cloud of adjective that respondents offered to an open-ended question about the U.S. economy: Uncertainty still reigns (as it should), but ”recovering”, “improving”, and [...]
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