The WSJ reports that the idea of a bank tax to fund future resolution efforts is gaining steam: The U.S. and European governments are moving toward a consensus on taxing large banks to cover the cost of any future bailouts rather than asking taxpayers to foot the bill, as happened regularly in past banking crises. […]

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of demographics. Generally, I think, that how populations grow or stagnate and how they migrate ultimately trumps just about any effort, public or private, to order society. I’ve speculated without any data several times that the Great Recession might have some pretty profound impacts on this […]

Tyler Cowen had a typically good post about inflation yesterday. The part I want to highlight though relates to his comments about unemployment and stimulating aggregate demand: There is an asymmetry between layoffs and rehires.  If an economy starts heading into recession, robust aggregate demand may limit the number of layoffs.  But once those workers […]

Well, not surprisingly the Obama administration refuses to listen to me and instead of just letting the housing market work through its pain, they have come out with yet another “fix”. This one involves some enhancements to HAMP in their never ending search to establish price stability for the market and validate the fiction that […]

Joe Weisenthal asks why we didn’t know that embedded in the new healthcare bill is a provision that requires fast food chains throughout the country to post the calorie count of their offerings. To Joe’s credit, he takes some of the blame for the less than stellar analysis that the press offered on this historic […]

There was a lot of stuff floating around today that pertained to the housing market. Here is a compilation of sorts and some thoughts. First, the National Association of Realtors reported that new home sales were down 0.6% which resulted in a SAAR rate of 5.02 million home sales. The inventory of homes for sale […]

Well, it’s pretty much a done deal for the time being. Being somewhat of a political junkie, I’ve at least enjoyed the last few weeks of back and forth on the health care bill even if I’m not thrilled with the outcome. I’m till distilling my thoughts on this one, so I intend to wait […]