Cantor short Treasuries
The Wall Street Journal reported the other day (here it is, but it’s behind a paywall) that as of his last disclosure form, House Republican leader Eric Cantor owned shares in a mutual fund that is short long-dated U.S. Treasury bonds. He is, in other words, betting that interest rates will rise, and hoping to make money off the fall in prices that would cause. (For my ancient primer on why bond prices fall when interest rates rise, see here.) Cantor is in a position to help the U.S. default on its… Read More
Wisconsin: game over?
I wish sometime that I’d be proven wrong in my pessimism. But it looks like the great upsurge in Wisconsin has petered out. Listen to my interview with Abe Sauer in the June 25 radio show I just posted. Or read Progressive editor Matt Rothschild’s gloomy assessment from a week ago: Wisconsin Demoralized, Demobilized. It’s the same damn story over and over. The state AFL-CIO chooses litigation and electoral politics over popular action, which dissolves everything into mush. Meanwhile, the right is vicious, crafty, and uncompromising. Guess who wins that sort of confrontation?… Read More
Krugman’s lazy apologia
Paul Krugman can’t stop attacking the McKinsey survey. His filed his latest apologia this morning (“McKinsey Pulls Back the Curtain”). It’s not his finest moment. He dismisses the report as a mere “poll,” which is presumably a less reliable thing than the economic models that everyone else has been using. But why should a detailed survey—over 50 questions asked of over 1,300 respondents, mostly decision-makers—be less reliable than statistical extrapolations from not very comparable historical data? Krugman quotes a stat from a Time reporter, Kate Pickert—not from the original document, curiously—with what… Read More
McKinsey: more right than wrong
Administration apologists, from the White House official blog to Paul Krugman (“McKinseyGate”), have all lined up to denounce the McKinsey survey I wrote up here the other day (“Bye-bye employer health insurance”). McKinsey found that a large share of employers who now offer health insurance benefits will drop them once ObamaCare comes into effect in 2014. At first, McKinsey didn’t release the questions or the methodology, prompting reactions like Krugman’s: It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the study was embarrassingly bad — maybe it was a skewed sample, maybe the questions… Read More
Breaking news: robed ghouls act in character
So the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Walmart (né Wal-Mart) sex discrimination case. It can be summarized in three words of Brooklyn dialect: “get outta here.” I will defer to my wife, Liza Featherstone, who wrote the book on the case, for detailed analysis. But I am overcome with the need to denounce, so please indulge me. Liberals will anguish endlessly over this decision, parsing it in that tediously fetishistic way that has become all too familiar. But really, the Supreme Court is a fundamentally reactionary tool of bourgeois power…. Read More
Sidwell Friends teacher: tests are unreliable
Sidwell Friends faculty member: “We don’t tie teacher pay to test scores because we don’t believe them to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.” That’s where Obama sends his kids. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sends his kids to Arlington County, Va., public schools. They don’t use tests in evaluating teachers either. Thanks to Amy Offner for pointing me to this on Facebook: Teacher evaluations at the schools that Obama, Duncan picked for their kids.
Compare & contrast: KIPP vs. Sidwell Friends
Education “reformers”—who love testing, discipline, and charter schools—wouldn’t send their own kids to the institutions they prescribe for other people. Cases in point. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has praised the KIPP schools (Secretary Arne Duncan’s Remarks at the KIPP Annual Dinner) as “extraordinary” models. Here’s KIPP’s “Commitment to Excellence”: Teachers’ Commitment We fully commit to KIPP in the following ways: • We will arrive at KIPP every day by 7:15 am (Monday-Friday). • We will remain at KIPP until 5:00 pm (Monday -Thursday) and 4:00 pm on Friday. • We will come… Read More
Bye-bye employer health insurance
McKinsey is out with the results of a survey of 1,300 employers (How US health care reform will affect employee benefits), and the lead finding is a shocker: a third or more are likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers as Obamacare takes effect. Clearly, not all bosses fully understand the economics of the new health insurance universe. Right now, 30% of respondents to McKinsey’s survey “will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014”—but 50% of those with “high awareness of reform” will do so. (The… Read More
Education policy in the USA
Golf, militarism, Jesus, and noblesse oblige. From Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook : IF YOU’RE FREE AT LUNCH: Cornerstone Schools of Washington, an oasis of rigor and stability for 220 African-American pupils in inner-city D.C., is holding its annual benefit golf tournament in Alexandria. At an 11:30 a.m. reception before the golfers tee off, students will be on hand who would love to meet you. You don’t have to golf or give: The students would get a kick out of hearing about your exciting life. The executive director and principal is Clay Hanna,… Read More
Learning nothing from crisis (cont.)
An update to Back to the status quo ante bustum: Aline van Duyn reports in the Financial Times that corporate America is once again borrowing money to buy up its stock to boost share prices. The rise in buy-backs and deals marks a turning point in the credit cycle, as companies become more willing to invest their cash and borrow more money. Since the 2008 financial crisis, many companies have been hoarding cash and building up ever greater treasure chests and rainy-day funds. No more of that prudent stuff. But hire, boost capital spending,… Read More
Bankers fly in private jets, regulators ride the bus
These guys are supposed to regulate Wall Street? U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen: “On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog [the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak.”
David Brooks can’t add
Fact-checking David Brooks could be a full-time job. Just yesterday, he wrote this about the federal budget problem: Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Almost every word of this is wrong. Medicare doesn’t require “tens of trillions,” unless your budget horizon is something like twenty years. This year, Medicare will cost $572 billion. In 2020, according to the CBO, it will cost $949 billion. Over the… Read More
Everyday ideology
The spelling dictionary for Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 does not recognize the names “Marx” or “Engels.”
StimPak still stimulating
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is out with its latest estimates of the effects of the stimulus package—officially the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA)—on employment and incomes. For the fourth quarter of 2010, the CBO estimates that ARRA: raised real GDP by 1.1–3.5% lowered the unemployment rate by 0.7–1.9 points increased the number of people employed by 1.3–3.5 million increased the number of full-time equivalent jobs by 1.8–5.0 million above what would have happened without ARRA These are substantial numbers. Take GDP. The midpoint of the estimate is 2.3%. Real GDP is… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 