Dean Baker

The Washington Post listed the three top polling candidates for each major party’s presidential nomination and their main issues. It then complained about the problems that aren’t on anyone’s list “such as the coming crisis in Social Security and Medicare.” The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s most recent projections show that Social Security can pay all […]

Newsweek has an article this week about Thailand’s decision to issue compulsory licenses for a number of important drugs. By eliminating patent monopolies on several AIDS drugs, as well as a few other medications, Thailand was able to reduce prices by close to two-thirds. Naturally, the drug industry is furious over the possibility that their […]

Greg Ip has a nice piece reporting on the latest academic research. If first quarter GDP growth comes in around 2.2 percent, which is now the consensus forecast, chalk up another weak quarter for productivity growth. –Dean Baker

Being a budget reporter at the Washington Post is a full-time job. In principle, its reporters should have the time to verify the truth or falsehood of specific claims about the budget. Washington Post readers mostly have other jobs, they do not have the time to independently verify the budget claims that they read in […]

Media coverage of trade issues is so badly distorted that many readers will no doubt think that the assertion that “protectionists promote foreign investment” is an oxymoron. After all protectionists are supposed to be xenophobic rubes who want to build walls around the United States. Of course, the United States and many other countries have […]

NPR joined the never ending scare campaign this morning, telling listeners that our standard of living will be threatened if we don’t get the deficit under control. Of course the whole story, as always, is the projection of exploding health care costs which, if they prove accurate, will sink the economy regardless of what we […]

David Cay Johnston reports on the latest data on income (2005), which shows the upward redistribution of income is continuing. While I don’t doubt that this story is basically true, I think that the IRS data is somewhat problematic for two reasons. First, incomes at the very top are extremely volatile because they depend hugely […]

According to the NYT, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee yesterday that he �expects business investment and consumer spending to continue to grow.� This statement is a bit disconcerting, because investment is not growing. The Commerce Department reported that non-residential investment fell at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the […]

The WSJ has an article today noting the concerns that Princeton economist Alan Blinder has raised about trade. Both Mr. Blinder’s concerns and the discussion seem a bit bizarre. Blinder’s new concerns about trade stem from the fact that some highly skilled workers, in areas like software development and financial research, are being placed at […]

There were several news reports this evening of investigations into possible fraud commited by Beazer Homes, a major builder. Naturally, all right thinking people will be “shocked, shocked” to find out that there might have been fraud taking place. When you get a speculative mania, like the current housing bubble, fraud is a virtual certainty. […]