krebscycle

Category: Uncategorized

  • Paul Krugman and poker

    Simpson-Bowles is terrible…. It offers nothing on Medicare that isn’t already in the Affordable Care Act. And it raises the Social Security retirement age because life expectancy has risen — completely ignoring the fact that life expectancy has only gone up for the well-off and well-educated, while stagnating or even…

  • The ultimate philosophy text

    In the neighborhood lived a famous dervish who passed for the best philosopher in Turkey; they went to consult him: Pangloss, who was their spokesman, addressed him thus: “Master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?” “Why do you…

  • Ron Bloom explains finance

    From Wall Street Journal REMARKS TO: INSOL INTERNATIONAL ANNUAL REGIONAL CONFERENCE FAIRMONT SCOTTSDALE PRINCESS SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONAMAY 21, 2006 RON BLOOM SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT UNITED STEELWORKERS Let me of course start by thanking you for inviting me to speak to you here today. I have had the opportunity to…

  • Why much of wall street hates Obama

    Citigroup stock compared to S&P 500 over last 5 years. S&P has totally recovered from the crash. Citigroup – not so much. In fact, gross revenue has failed to recover.  And yet the “progressive” economists keep telling us President Obama is hapless puppet of Geithner and gave the banks exactly…

  • Cosma Shalizi explains it to Brad Delong and lim[pretending-> inf]

    To start: If you open up any good book on welfare economics or general equilibrium which has appeared since Debreu’s Theory of Value… economic agents care about… their own consumption of goods and services. Does any agent in any such model care at all about what any other agent gets…

  • Progressive negotiating

    Imagine the GOP had offered President Obama the following deal make the Bush tax cut for the rich permanent Raise eligibility for Social Security by 5 years Cut cap gains Pass law so that in 5 years, Medicare eligibility starts going down, one month a year until it is at…

  • Wishful thinking about the GOP

    I don’t get this type of logic at all. Might We Not Want a GOP Congress Come November? 7SEP This post from Digby makes me wonder: is the only thing stopping Obama from getting his desired Grand Compromise of cutting social programs in order to reduce the deficit the GOP’s refusal to…

  • Why Paul Ryan fears Simpson-Bowles and the Grand Compromise (w/update)

    The “conservatives” do not now and have never opposed increasing the Federal debt. Ron Reagan tripled the debt. Dick Cheney famously told advisers that deficits don’t matter. George Bush took a balanced budget and set it on fire, doubled the debt, and left the Obama administration such fiscal shambles that…

  • Cynicism of the naive

    Watching the discussions of lefty pedants on line is an education in naive cynicism. Consider Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention.  Here’s Corey Robin: Last night at the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama defined “the very best of the American spirit” as “teachers in a near-bankrupt school district who vowed…

  • Debt: Essence of the first 500 odd reviews

    Where does this leave Graeber’s other alternative approach, the credit theories of money? In asserting that debt is the essence of money, Graeber seems to be saying two quite different things. First, there is the argument we have already seen that money is not a thing but an abstract unit…