Dean Baker

The WSJ is effectively covering up for the Fed and the economics profession by implying that there was something difficult about recognizing the 70 percent jump in real house prices as a bubble or realizing that its collapse would lead to serious economic damage. The bubble was not difficult to spot for any serious analyst […]

Reporters have to start realizing that making a comparison of year over year same store retail sales is not the same in 2009 as it is most other times. Many stores have closed over the last year and very few have opened. This means that it should be expected that same store sales would rise […]

That appears to be the main point of a news article complaining that the stimulus money was spent too fast. The article talks to construction contractors who complain that they have a limited backlog of orders for 2010. It notes that 77 percent of the $27 billion in highway contracts had already been committed by […]

That is the implication of the assertion, cited on NPR, that legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to adjust the terms of mortgages would lead to a sharp jump in interest rates. All the legislation being proposed is time-limited and would only apply to mortgages that were issued during the bubble years. While this could […]

The NYT tells us that the increases in the debts of government caused by the collapse of housing bubbles is “startling,” noting that Germany’s debt to GDP ratio will rise to 77 percent next year, while Britain’s will rise to more than 80 percent. There certainly have been substantial increases in government debt caused by […]

That is what his column implies, even if Robert Samuelson doesn’t know it. Samuelson warned that a Fed audit could led to a “rapid fall in the dollar’s foreign exchange value.” Of course the over-valuation of the dollar is the main reason that the United States has a large trade deficit. If the dollar fell […]

The NYT discusses plans to pay for a new round of stimulus with unspent TARP money and contrasts this position with the Obama administration’s desire to use the money to pay reduce the deficit. Under the law, unspent TARP money automatically goes back to the Treasury. This means that using TARP money for stimulus is […]

The New York Times told readers that the Obama administrations opposes legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the authority to change the terms of home mortgages during a bankruptcy. If this is true, it would mark a major reversal from his position during the campaign when he strongly supported such legislation. If Mr. Obama did […]

Yes, it was way back in the fall of 2008, but we do know that the economy was on the brink of economic collapse. We know that the Fed brought the economy to the brink of collapse because that it is what Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress when he was trying to […]

The current policy is a subsidy from taxpayers to Amazon at the expense of small businesses. I suppose there is a planet somewhere in the universe where this makes sense, but it doesn’t here on earth. The NYT is exactly right, Jeff Bezos is a big boy, he can pay sales taxes on his sales […]