economy eyes

Under CBO’s ‘Extended Baseline’, i.e.

by Bruce Webb CBO Director’s Blog summary of Long Term Budget Outlook (Interesting side comment: “Later this week, CBO will release a report on a number of different policy options for changing Social Security”). Elmendorf, not surprising given his history and current job, is fully on the side of the deficit hawk/hysterics. Report text (1.2MB PDF) Long Term Budget Outlook These were just released at 9AM Eastern so I haven’t had a crack at them yet

by Linda Beale crossposted with Ataxingmatter Some Links Worth Noting at CBPP–causes of deficit, increases in income inequality Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Where Today’s Large Deficits Come From Amidst all the renewed talk about budget deficits, it’s important to remind ourselves what caused the signficiant expansion of the deficit. As I’ve noted, it can be attributed primarily to three things: Bush’s tax cuts, Bush’s decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the need for economic stimulus and financial system bailout to counter the financial crisis that began in the next to last year of Bush’s Administration as a result of the four-decades-long financialization of the economy due to deregulation and development of a casino-gambling mentality in the nation’s commercial and investment banks.

Andy Harless presents the case for a double dip (second recession) – I would re-order #1 and #2 on that list – and that for a sustained recovery.

by Linda Beale crossposted with Ataxingmatter The Supreme Court’s Decision in In re Bilski:: does it allow tax patents or not? The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bilski Monday, holding, as almost everyone had predicted, that the hedging process that was the subject of the Bilski claim was unpatentable. Download Bilski at SCOTUS 08-964 .

by Mike Kimel Cross-posted on the Presimetrics blog . Taxes and Private Sector Investment – Evidence from the Real World Last week I had a post (which appeared both here and at Angry Bear )

The Washington Post reports on an interesting development. If people aren’t able to “see” how they personally fit in to the ‘economy’ or ‘carbon footprint’ in a real way, they often ignore the ‘problem’ or keep it so abstract it does not touch them

by Bruce Webb via Brad DeLong we learn that CBO is releasing its 2010 Long Term Budget Outlook on Wednesday at 9AM.

by Beverly Mann originally posted at The Annarborist A Caveat, Walter Dellinger “In Skilling (ably explained by Paul’s posting), my law firm colleagues pressed the argument that the statutory crime of denying anyone of the “intangible right of honest services” was unconstitutionally vague unless it was sharply limited to bribery and kickbacks. Given that the honest-services statute had been the basis of hundreds of prosecutions that had been upheld in every federal court of appeals, it may have seemed an unlikely gambit to challenge its constitutionality at this late date

Paul Krugman is direct and to the point this morning: Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31. Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew.