Blog: Beat the Press

The Washington Post had another piece pushing deficit scare stories. This time it tells readers that Greece’s problems could spillover to the U.S. According to the piece, fears of a Greek default could lead investors to become more worried about a U.S. default, pushing up interest rates on U.S. government bonds. There are two logical […]

Okay, he said “runaway federal spending,” but as long as you’re making stuff up, you might as well make it invading Martians. It’s no less true and a hell of a lot more exciting. As those of us here on planet earth know, there is no credible story of runaway federal spending. The budget deficit […]

The NYT contrasts the resistance to austerity measures in Greece with the enthusiastic embrace of budget cutbacks by the Irish government. It is worth noting that Ireland’s unemployment rate has increased from 4.6 percent before the crisis to 13.0 percent in the most recent data. It is unlikely that many of the economists and policymakers […]

On Wednesday of every week the Mortgage Bankers Association releases its index of mortgage applications which provides data on applications for mortgages for both purchase mortgages and refinancing. For some reason this index is almost completely ignored by economic reporters. This is difficult to understand. While a single week’s data is of limited value, because […]

That is undoubtedly the question that many would have after reading a Post article on an effort to stop stimulus spending on wind energy because some of the turbines are built in China. The point of stimulus was of course to create jobs in the United States. If it turned out that spending in a […]

The Post tells us that reconciliation: “is a procedure created in 1974 to help lawmakers advance politically difficult budget legislation, particularly measures that reduce the deficit.” It then tells us that it has been used 22 times. Two of these 22 uses were to pass President Bush’s major tax cuts. –Dean Baker

The NYT told readers that: “The pound fell to $1.4954 on Tuesday, its lowest level against the dollar in nearly 10 months. The yield on 10-year government bonds, known as gilts, slid as investors fretted that Parliament would be too fragmented after a crucial election in May to whip Britain’s messy finances back into shape.” […]

After Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke is more responsible for the economic downturn than any other person in the country. He was a Fed governor from 2002 to 2005 and then chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors from the summer of 2005 until he took over as Federal Reserve Board chairman in January of […]

The NYT reviewed a new book by Jaron Lanier, who we are assured is a very creative person and one of the early pioneers of the web. According to the review, Mr. Lanier is very upset about people getting material at no cost over the web. His preferred solution is harsher punishments for copyright violation. […]

He told readers that: “Democrats on the whole believe in using government to correct the inequities and inefficiencies the market creates, while Republicans on the whole think market outcomes are almost always better than anything government can produce.” No, it just ain’t so. Republicans (and many Democrats) want the government to structure markets to redistribute […]