Dean Baker

The focus groups must have found that saying that much of the government debt is held by foreigners got people really scared, because the deficit hawks keep citing this fact. Ruth Marcus does it today in the Post, telling readers that: “When the economic crisis hit, the country enjoyed the fiscal flexibility to respond with […]

The Washington Post had a front page article reporting on the shortfalls facing state unemployment insurance funds as the unemployment rate remains in or near double-digit levels. At one point it tells readers that: “the troubles the state programs face can be traced to a failure during the economic boom to properly prepare for a […]

A Washington Post article that is ostensibly on Ireland’s budget problems begins: “Is this the ghost of America’s future?” This no doubt had readers asking “is this the way to begin a news story on Ireland?” On the other hand, since the headline is “in Ireland’s deep budget cuts, an omen for a heavily indebted […]

David Brooks argues that the U.S. economy will be all about protectionism going forward. Specifically, he says that we aren’t going to be making things in the future, we will support ourselves with the rents earned on patents, copyrights and other forms of intellectual property claims. (Really, I’m not making this up.) There are two […]

The NYT has a piece noting the surge in hiring in the temporary employment industry. The article notes that in the last two recessions a rise in temporary employment had preceded a rise in permanent employment. It is worth noting that in the past when job growth had resumed there had also been much lower […]

The Post has a lengthy front page article today about how the Fed under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke missed the problems developing in the subprime mortgage market. The piece makes many good points, but it missed the real story: the housing bubble. Yes, bad subprime and Alt-A loans were a problem, but the only […]

That is the only thing that one conclude based on the assertion in a front page article that Republicans are opposed to health care reform because they: “consider [reform] to be a disastrous government intervention in the nation’s health-care system.” Yes, that is what Republican members of Congress say, but how do we know that […]

Floyd Norris has a fascinating little piece this morning that constructs a new “misery index” that combines a nation’s unemployment rate and its budget deficit (measured as a share of GDP). The point is that the budget deficit indicates to some extent the country’s ability to stimulate its economy further in order to reduce unemployment, […]

The NYT asserted that members of Congress and activists who are opposed to a health care plan that will likely lead to a sharp jump in profits for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are motivated by “ideology,” and contrasted their motivation with the “pragmatic” President Obama. The Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts have […]

In a chart comparing populations, GDP, and greenhouse gas emissions, the NYT used exchange rate measures of GDP rather than purchasing power parity measures. This gives a hugely distorted picture, since exchange rates can be arbitrary and fluctuate widely. The difference matters hugely in the case of China. The chart shows China’s GDP as being […]