Archive for July, 2010
Arizona Injunction; Baker on CBO and SS
(1) Possibly Irrelevant Image for today: (2) Judge Blocks Az. Law S.B. 1070. Breaking news–U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton blocked key parts of Arizona’s restrictive and invasive immigration law, which was to go into effect in a couple of days. Here’s what the New York Times has to say: In a ruling on a ...Read more.
Black on Dodd-Frank; USAS Victory; etc.
Various items: (1) New Blog Feature: Possibly Irrelevant Images. With this post I inaugurate a new feature for the D&S blog (or at least my posts here): Possibly Irrelevant Images, random images I have come across on the Internets (as I like to call them, in tribute to GWB). An inspiration for this feature is ...Read more.
G20, Deficits, etc.
A few items about the G20 meetings have been languishing on my desk (or rather as tabs in my browser). It is time to liberate them (and my browser) by turning them into a blog post. But first: on deficits, etc.: On deficits: Our intern Julie Herlihy put together a deficit page for the D&S ...Read more.
Three Big Headlines: BP, Banking, Goldman
Wow–three big headlines today: (1) BP supposedly manages to cap the Deepwater Horizon well–for now, at least–after 87 days of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. It is clearly far from over. Not only are we not really sure whether the well will stop spewing oil (as indicated by this article posted to the ...Read more.
The Root of Economic Fragility (Reich)
Interesting piece from Robert Reich’s blog. An excerpt: The Root of Economic Fragility and Political Anger Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Missing from almost all discussion of America’s dizzying rate of unemployment is the brute fact that hourly wages of people with jobs have been dropping, adjusted for inflation. Average weekly earnings rose a bit this ...Read more.
Financial Reform Inches More
It now appears that with Scott Brown (our “populist” senator from Massachusetts) has agreed to support the reconciled version of the banking reform bill, once he wrested concessions favorable to Massachusetts-based banks like State Street and Fidelity. With votes from Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, Brown’s vote will make for the sixty votes necessary for ...Read more.
History of BP and Transocean
Yestesrday’s Times had an article about the alleged misdeeds of Transocean, the company that owned (still owns, I suppose) the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in April, setting into motion the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history (still underway). The company has been accused of: doing business with Myanmar, Syria, and Iran; having ties to ...Read more.
Dean Baker on David Brooks
Dean Baker posted a great response to that David Brooks column I mentioned yesterday. Here’s what he says: The Arrogant David Brooks Tells Readers That Stimulus Will Risk National Insolvency Tuesday, 06 July 2010 03:27 David Brooks has decided to jump into the debate over stimulus with both feet. In a column in which he ...Read more.
The Bleak Jobs Picture
Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was bleak. Though the unemployment rate went down to 9.5% (from 9.7%), that’s because the ranks of discouraged workers increased. The economy shed 125,000 jobs, which was mostly due to the end of some 200K temporary Census jobs. Private employers added only 83K jobs. Here’s an ...Read more.
