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Payroll Tax Holiday and the Trust Funds, by Arnold Kling
Found on Trader's Narrative on Tue 7th Sep 10
Megan McArdle writes, Politically, this has one major drawback: it's going to put huge holes in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Since I think those trust funds are meaningless accounting devices, I don't think this has any practical relevance.
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Obama Announces Transportation Infrastructure Spending Plan
Found on Trader's Narrative on Wed 8th Sep 10
US President Barack Obama announced a transportation infrastructure spending plan to expand and renew US roads, railways and runways. The plan envisions a front-loaded $50-billion investment in the first year. The plan would also reform the way the US currently
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A Bipartisan Stimulus Plan
Found on Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis on Wed 8th Sep 10
President Obama and Democrats are of the Keynesian mindset that we need to get people to work and get the economy moving again and construction projects are a good way of doing so. Republicans disagree and favor tax cuts.On a totally different topic, Republicans
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Peter Orszag Breaking Free from the Bush/Obama Tax Cuts
Found on The New Ledger » Markets & Policy on Wed 8th Sep 10
(Photo from Runner’s World story by Amy Reinink. Go, Peter!)In today’s New York Times, this column by new “contributing columnist” Peter Orszag, only freshly retired from his position as Obama budget director (emphasis added):In the
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Should the Bush tax cuts be extended?
Found on The New Ledger » Markets & Policy on Tue 7th Sep 10
EARLIER in the year, as debt worries wracked European financial markets, one might have thought that the expiration of most of the Bush tax cuts was a foregone conclusion. As recently as July, Barack Obama was planning on allowing the cuts for top tax brackets
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A new hope
Found on Free exchange on Tue 7th Sep 10
MAYBE I should have asked about an infrastructure spending package sooner:President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve at least $50 billion in long-term investments in the nation's roads, railways and runways in a pre-election effort to show he's trying
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The August Employment Report
Found on Calculated Risk on Wed 8th Sep 10
The latest from the BLS on the employment situation is more of the same. There was essentially no net job growth -- a decline of 54,000 consisting of a fall in government employment as Census workers finished up that was not quite offset by a rise in
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No Increase In Social Security Age Eligibility!
Found on Angry Bear on Wed 8th Sep 10
Ezra Klein had an excellent piece in Sunday's WaPo criticizing the current push from the Deficit Reduction Commission to raise the retirement age for social security, which he notes seems to have bipartisan support on the commission and is the item they are
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European Stress Tests and more
Found on naked capitalism on Wed 8th Sep 10
From the WSJ tonight: Europe's Bank Stress Tests Minimized Debt RiskWe've discussed this several times - as an example, in Part 5D of the sovereign debt series, "some investor guy" wrote:Q1. Was there much sovereign stress in the European bank stress tests?NO.
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"What Role Did the Fed Play In the Housing Bubble?"
Found on Economist's View on Mon 6th Sep 10
HTML clipboard David Beckworth pushes back against some posts that have appeared here and elsewhere recently (my view is that low interest rates played a role, as did regulatory failures, but these were not the only causes of the crisis): What Role Did the
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