Tim Fernholz

Mike Crowley suggests that McCain can find his mojo in New England, with a desperate bid to win New Hampshire and one of Maine’s congressional districts. The claim relies on the idea that McCain has a mystical connection with the state’s voters thanks to his primary wins and maverick status. Having grown up in New […]

David Brooks uses a column full of nonsense (patio man? seriously?) to drag out an interesting point at the very end: But the shift in public opinion is not from right to left, or from anti-government to pro-government, it’s from risk to caution, from disorder to consolidation. There is a deep current of bourgeois culture […]

I am of course referring to this: “Consensus Emerges to Let Deficit Rise.” And it’s about time that people realize this is a pragmatic, sensible position, backed not just by leftist economics but by plenty of empirical data. Even a lot of budget hawks understand that spending needs to shore up the economy through the […]

We’re all pretty much JTPed out, but it’s worth nothing that the McCain campaign’s obsession with the man reveals a surprising fact about the presidential race: Obama was and is winning on the tax issue. Calling Democrats tax-and-spenders has been a mainstay of GOP messaging for many years, and it is usually a winning issue […]

Mark Krikorian at the Corner: But, justly or not, we’ve reached the point where waving the bloody shirt of 60s radicalism just doesn’t work any more. Krikoran doesn’t think conservatives should deal with contemporary issues as a matter of course, he thinks they should stop their sixties fetishism because … no one else cares. Stand […]

Here’s the second part of a very interesting two-part essay explaining some of the economic factors behind the current recession and how it compares to the archetypal 1930s experience. James Livingston makes the argument that the real cause of the housing bubble is the excess capital released by the Bush tax cuts that poured into […]

In his column today, Paul Krugman takes a bold stand for the forces of macroeconomics: If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next […]

Sheila Blair Bair, head of the FDIC, makes a good point in an interview this morning: “Why there’s been such a political focus on making sure we’re not unduly helping borrowers but then we’re providing all this massive assistance at the institutional level, I don’t understand it,” she said. “It’s been a frustration for me. […]

Though it will be a few days before the polls really react to last night’s debate, it seems like a good time to take stock of the election in the wake of the candidates’ last scheduled public appearance together. The conventional wisdom, such as it is, is that McCain had his best debate of the […]

Does anyone else see a disconnect between John McCain’s dismissing “spreading the wealth around” and then immediately promising to rebuild your savings and grow your investments? (And his housing plan is essentially to buy your house if you can’t afford it). –Tim Fernholz