I wrote a post about this some time ago and I’ve seen several others in the same vein but little from Washington and particularly the Republicans. I suggested in the previous post that we should seriously look at diverting a significant amount of money from any stimulus bill towards rebuilding our armed forces. The logic […]
Archive for January 27th, 2009
How About A Little Fiscal Stimulus For Our Depleted Armed Services?
The Worldwide Race To Save The Car Industry
As we race our trading partners to see who can disguise their subsidies more adeptly, here is a rather neat compilation from the Guardian as to the efforts so far. USOn top of a $17.4bn (£12.4bn) lifeline handed to GM and Chrysler, the government has pledged $6bn to support General Motors’s finance arm. GM has […]
New Details Emerge On The Government’s Bad Bank
Via Calculated Risk, CNBC is reporting that the “bad bank” concept is emerging as the vehicle of choice to recapitalize the banks. It may get kicked off next week. Not a lot of new news there but they did have some information on the mechanism for setting the price of the assets to be purchased […]
Credit Default Swaps: Some Reading If The Super Bowl Gets Dull
If you’re staying at home for the Super Bowl and need something to occupy your time during “officials reviews” or when the commercials start going into rerun mode, here is a lengthy discussion of credit default swaps to look over. It’s by Peter Wallison and was published in the RGE Monitor. Be sure and read […]
How To Restructure Fannie And Freddie
Susan Woodward and John Hall are two economists who write infrequently but generally quite well when they do post something. They are out today with recommendations as to where to go with Fannie and Freddie and by implication the residential mortgage finance sector. Here is their summary of recommendations: The GSEs should be preserved, mainly […]
Feldstein On The Prospects For The Euro
For those of you who are wonkishly inclined and interested in the prospects for the EU, you might want to check out this on VoxEu.org. It’s by Martin Feldstein, a noted skeptic on the viablilty of the euro. Feldstein corrects some misconceptions concerning his earlier comments about the euro and reprises the basis for his […]
Fiscal Stimulus: Just In Time For Which Recession?
The Congressional Budget Office is out with its estimate of the timing of expenditures under the stimulus program. Presumably, this one is for real and won’t need further revision in order to wipe egg off of the faces of our representatives. Here is how it looks. By Fiscal Year, in Billions of Dollars […]