Dean Baker

No doubt many of you have been concerned about Goldman Sachs getting a bad rap. People have been getting down on them just because they made $3.4 billion in profits last quarter, betting with the taxpayers’ money, and that they intend to hand out this bounty in bonuses to their executives. Fortunately, the Washington Post […]

In an article about strange happenings in Alaska, the NYT notes the sharp fluctuations in oil prices over the last year, after telling readers: “for years, the price of oil has been relatively stable.” That sure has not been the case in the lower 48. Oil prices fell to under $15 a barrel back in […]

Readers might be asking that question when the NYT told them that CBO’s analysis implied that the House’s health care bill would raise the deficit by that amount. It is equal to about 0.13 percent of projected GDP over this period. By comparison, the Iraq War at its peak cost more than 1.0 percent of […]

No, I am not kidding. The Washington Post (Fox on 15th Street) applauded the big profits at Goldman, which will mean bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars for top performers. Goldman is able to make these payouts because it won with the bets that it made with taxpayers’ money. We all know what […]

Okay, this is some self-promotion, but it is also about pushing a serious plan to help millions of people that are losing their home due to foreclosure. Rather than having expensive and complicated mortgage modifications, Congress could just temporarily change the law on foreclosure so that homeowners will have the option to remain in their […]

Doug Elmendorf, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Senate Budget Committee yesterday that nothing in its proposed health care bill will substantially reduce the rate of growth of health care growth. This assessment is clearly not helpful to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a bill through Congress, but how bad is […]

Yes, Fox on 15th Street strikes again. The Washington Post reported on a letter signed by more than 250 economists that warned against efforts to make the Fed more accountable to Congress. Remarkably, it has never seen fit to note the main item that would lead to more accountability: a bill sponsored by representatives Ron […]

The Fed reported its new economic forecasts along with the minutes of its June meetings yesterday. What is striking is how far off its earlier forecasts have proved to be. The bottom end of the central range for its unemployment forecasts is above the top end of this range for the forecasts made just two […]

In its top of the hour news segment on Morning Edition NPR reported on the House health care bill, which would raise taxes on people who earn more than $250,000 a year. It then told listeners that President Obama had promised not to do this. That is not true. President Obama’s pledge was to not […]

USA Today headlined a piece on new numbers on manufacturing: “reports on factory sector suggest economy is improving.” Since the Fed had just reported that manufacturing output had fallen another 0.6 percent in June, the basis for the good news touted in the headline was not obvious. It turns out that the New York Fed’s […]