Tim Fernholz

Today, economists forecast that the Gross Domestic Product would drop at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the final quarter of 2008 (it takes them a bit to figure this out). It’s the largest one-quarter drop since 1982. A full 2 percent of that came from the decline in auto manufacturing. Consumer sales and […]

Always a special thrill for me to be able to write about New Hampshire politics. Seems that word on the Hill is that Republican Senator Judd Gregg is under consideration to become the new administration’s Secretary of Commerce. Appointing Gregg to the post would, not coincidentally, give the Democrats a magically filibuster-proof 60 seats in […]

I’m feeling a little under the weather today so I won’t be blogging much (except to start trouble with Adam) but if you’re really missing my opinions, I would urge you to check out this Guardian column I wrote on the brief GOP love affair with the Congressional Budget Office and its phantom report: There […]

My colleague Adam largely misses it in this post about the stimulus bill vote. The bill as passed is the one Obama wanted. He won. The only part “stripped out” was the medicaid contraception provision, and while that’s not good public policy, it’s also likely to be implemented in the near future. The “bad” tax […]

Maybe not most useful, but certainly the funniest. Tom Ricks does finance: The latest round of massive corporate layoffs reminds of the financial crisis the Roman Empire suffered in 33 A.D. The resemblance is more than striking. — Tim Fernholz

I’ve sparred with Damon Linker about the “culture wars” before, and I can’t resist another chance at the conversation, since I think we were talking past each other a bit last time. Linker’s latest entry on this front: Now, I’m all for trying to undercut the political salience of culture-war issues. And I think symbolic […]

This week’s day-late edition of Think Tank Round-Up examines Latino public opinion, state-level tax shelters, growing union membership and the transit component of economic stimulus legislation the House of Representatives will vote on today. Check it out: Slip-sliding away. Even when immigration reform boiled over in 2007 after Congress and the Bush administration failed to […]

Food blogging is really Ezra’s jam, but I thought I’d call your attention to the “Bacon Explosion,” which seems like the perfect thing to make for Superbowl Festivities. But I don’t want to talk about the recipe, I want to point out this great passage: The Bacon Explosion posting has since been viewed about 390,000 […]

Since the financial crisis and throughout the debate over the government response to the recession, John Maynard Keynes’ name has been on everyone’s lips, but the references have been more of a rhetorical short-hand for a simplistic version of his approach to an economic crisis than an actual citation of his broader economic theories (I’m […]