Jul 12 Smacking Into the Debt Ceiling: the Day-by-Day Consequences By Paul Solman Daily U.S. Government Income and Expenditures: Use the slide bar to see how Treasury's cash deficit is projected to grow if the debt ceiling is reached, starting with Aug. 3. Mouse over the red points to see the running deficit… Continue reading
Jul 12 Smacking Into the Debt Ceiling: the Day-by-Day Consequences Daily U.S. Government Income and Expenditures: Use the slide bar to see how Treasury's cash deficit is projected to grow if the debt ceiling is reached, starting with Aug. 3. Mouse over the red points to see the running… Continue reading
Jul 12 Clock Is Ticking on Debt Agreement White House Chief of Staff William Daley, Press Secretary Jay Carney, adviser David Plouffe and Communications Director Daniel Pfeiffer listen to President Obama during Monday's news conference at the White House. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Television networks… Continue reading
Jul 11 Those Unemployment Figures May Be Even Worse Than You Think Job seekers register and pick up jobs fliers from employers at a June jobs fair in Los Angeles; Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images This post was updated at 10:47 a.m. ET on July 12 In the last week, the… Continue reading
Jul 11 'Have Wit, Will Travel' By Paul Solman Economics was dubbed "the dismal science" by 19th century English intellectual Thomas Carlyle. The reason: the Reverend Thomas Malthus' grim prediction, around 1800, that population would inevitably outstrip food supply, since the former grows geometrically (1,2,4,8...), the latter, arithmetically (1,2,3,4...). Continue reading
Jul 11 'Have Wit, Will Travel': The Life of an Economist And Stand-Up Comic By Paul Solman Economics was dubbed "the dismal science" by 19th century English intellectual Thomas Carlyle. The reason: the Reverend Thomas Malthus' grim prediction, around 1800, that population would inevitably outstrip food supply, since the former grows geometrically (1,2,4,8...), the latter, arithmetically (1,2,3,4...). Continue reading
Jul 11 Debt Ceiling Negotiations Enter Round 3 President Obama walks from a Marine One helicopter back to the White House on Sunday. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images. The debt and deficit negotiations are now aimed at accomplishing two goals. The first goal for all sides… Continue reading
Jul 10 No Deal Yet After Sunday Debt Limit Meeting President Obama at debt ceiling meeting with congressional leaders. Photo by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images Congressional leaders left the White House Sunday evening without news of a deal to reduce the federal deficit and raise the debt limit… Continue reading
Jul 08 Watch Dismal Unemployment Report Suggests Recovery May Be Stalling The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June as employers added the fewest jobs in nine months. Jeffrey Brown discusses the grim jobs reading and the stubbornly high employment gap between black and white Americans with Pomona College's… Continue watching
Jul 08 Jobs: the Dreary Data, a Desperate Viewer, a Pessimistic Professor By Paul Solman Goodness! U-7, our own measure of under-and unemployment, shot up to 18.6 percent this morning, a rise that gets us back near the number when we first inaugurated the Solman Scale last December. This morning's job numbers: only… Continue reading