Some are arguing for the fiscal cliff because we would reset the budget debate. With so many members of Congress taking a hard line on tax increases, there’s little way to increase revenues — and without more revenue there’s little chance of ever balancing the federal budget.
Should the Obama administration have pushed for an even larger stimulus package? It would have helped the economy in the short run but it would have created even more debt.
Could the Obama administration have gotten a larger package through Congress if their numbers had been more accurate from the beginning? I kind of doubt it.
Should the Obama administration have not pushed for a stimulus package at all and just let the economy keep spiraling downward?
New home sales ticked up today, but you can see on the great graph here by Calculated Risk that sales also ticked up back at the end of 2009 and in spring of 2010 — just before the twin expiration dates of the homebuyer tax credit. And when I say “ticked up”, that’s what I mean: the policy was completely inadequate given the massive scale of the decline in new home sales.
Some interesting news — and grim news for states including Michigan and Georgia — from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York about the number of REO loans nationally and per state. (REO = Real Estate Owned, i.e. properties now…
I’m not getting into the relative merits of having additional government employees, but it’s a simple fact that governments at all levels have added employees as the nation’s population has increased — and those increases have generally been affected hardly at all by recessions. But this time is different.
“Of course, Obama has no chance of getting a second term in this economy,” my friend said definitively. “And whoever gets elected in 2012 will be a one-term President too.”
Econbrowser has a post up today thoroughly debunking the conspiracy theories surrounding last Friday’s BLS estimate that the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month: Watergate! Iran-Contra! BLS 2012.10.5?
“The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s preliminary October reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment came in at 83.1, up from 78.3 the month before, and the highest since September 2007, the survey showed on Friday.”
Back in June, I wrote a column about the many major projects underway: Series of big investments bode well for Savannah. Today’s City Talk column builds on that one: New downtown Savannah plans include new hotel, townhouses, beer garden
For a much more detailed discussion, go to the following post from Calculated Risk (from which the chart below comes): Understanding the Decline in the Participation Rate. There’s more detailed discussion than I’m offering here, plus a total of five graphs, all of which should be of interest to anyone reading this.
The number of people identifying themselves as unemployed (looking for work but unable to find any) fell by 456,000 over the month.
Does Will understand the difference between “unemployed” and “not employed”? Or is he letting his own biases convince him that we’re actually seeing depression levels of unemployment? Or is he just so bad with numbers that he shouldn’t be using them at all?
I’ll be back with another post about the fiscal cliff in a couple of days, but there’s some interesting data out there today from the Tax Policy Center, which has released a study detailing how impending tax increases will affect Americans at different income levels.
