Dean Baker

In the middle of an article discussing how quickly France is spending out its stimulus money, the NYT tells readers that: “indeed, without major changes in government policies, France faces costs that will probably be crippling in the long run.” It is not clear that any country can ever go decades without major changes in […]

USA Today had a piece discussing lower rates of minority enrollment in 401(k) plans. It also notes that minorities are also less likely to put their money in stock and instead prefer safe bond and money market funds. The article suggests giving them more financial education. In fact, the financial educators were utterly clueless over […]

The economists who missed the housing bubble seem to be having a hard time understanding the timing of the stimulus. While the vast majority of the money has not yet been spent, the economy has already felt the bulk of its impact. The reason is simply, more than 60 percent of the stimulus takes the […]

Yeah, what else is new. If the United States is the victim of a nuclear attack, it will have a very bad deficit problem and a big program like Social Security will be an especially large burden. That is the nature of Fred Hiatt’s deficit whining in the Washington Post today. Actually, Hiatt isn’t even […]

Robert Samuelson asks a reasonable question in his column today: “what do economists do for a living?” More specifically, how did almost all economists fail to see the coming of the worst downturn since the Great Depression? However, Samuelson reaches the wrong conclusion in saying that the slump originated in finance. The highlights and headlines, […]

The Washington Post told readers that: “other Democrats worry about the unintended consequences of requiring employers to offer health coverage, such as an inclination to hire fewer low-income workers.” It seems unlikely that these critics of health care reform actually have this concern, since large scale layoffs due to a mandate is implausible. The cost […]

Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds are among the most widely circulated pieces of information in the world, running alongside information on the current time. However, AP’s reporters apparently do not have access to this information. How else can someone explain the assertion in an AP article that: “the Treasury is finding it harder to […]

It is worse than you thought. –Dean Baker

The pricing of oil in dollars creates an incredible amount of confusion among people who should know better. For example, USA Today tells us that: “how long the weak dollar can support energy prices, if demand is still weak, remains to be seen.” This one deserves a big “huh?” If the dollar falls in value […]

The argument that China is worried that it will lose money on its dollar holding because of a fall in the value of the dollar implies that the Chinese are morons. There can be no doubt that the dollar will fall and that the Chinese will lose money on their dollar holdings. The only thing […]