Joining New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie revised his estimate upward in asking for disaster relief funds to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, seeking $36.8 billion. The additional money would be used to reengineer beaches, including additional sand dunes, to protect the [...]

The Commerce Department revised its estimate of GDP in the third quarter up to 2.7%, a substantial gain from the initial estimate and an indication that the economy grew at a solid clip in the months leading up to the Presidential election, putting wind at the back of President Obama. This represents the fastest economic [...]

It’s easy to forget, amid the non-stop talk about long-term deficits, that the East Coast remains fairly ruined from the effects of Superstorm Sandy. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – who’s going to win re-election next year by saying he’s the only man in the state equipped to handle the reconstruction efforts – already released [...]

Morgan Stanley continues to predict a weak 1.4% growth for the US in 2013. I assume some of this pessimism has to do with the potential for a nasty fiscal slope. But this forecast mirrors their previous forecast in September, so nothing has changed in their analysis in the two months where policymakers crept closer [...]

First-time jobless claims spiked to 439,000 after nearly a year under 400,000. The reason for this sudden weakness in the US economy? Suprestorm Sandy. This sharp increase is due to Hurricane Sandy as claims increased significantly in the impacted areas. Note the spike in 2005 related to hurricane Katrina – we are seeing a similar [...]

Chris Christie thought it a proud moment to claim, two weeks after Hurricane Sandy, that all power would be restored in the state of New Jersey. The public suffering most from the effects of the storm has not been amused by the boasts and exhortations of politicians. Meanwhile, residents in Long Island who have been [...]

Among the many other reasons not to engage in a grand bargain during the lame duck session is that Congress actually needs to get busy with other matters. For a variety of reasons, mainly that they’re not good at their job, Congress left a multitude of items on the table for the lame duck, many [...]

Hurricane Sandy, and now the nor’easter storm that’s blown through the Northeast, has obviously caused a lot of devastation from an economic standpoint. That extends to the housing market. The 90-day moratorium on foreclosures will dry up a lot of inventory for speculators. And it’s already cutting into the mortgage application index. “Last week’s storm [...]

I think Rudy Giuliani is just being a good partisan by claiming that the federal response to Superstorm Sandy has been worse than Katrina. But has the media run with a narrative of competence and professional response while residents in Staten Island and Rockaway Beach, for example, yell for help? I think that’s beyond question. And the anger is growing in these areas.

In contrast to Florida and Ohio, two states suffering from the worst effects of Hurricane Sandy are working to ensure the maximum voter turnout tomorrow. Of course, both states suppress their voters by not holding early voting options. But New York and New Jersey, concerned about Election Day just one week after Superstorm Sandy, have [...]

I already mentioned Bob Kuttner’s piece on the new fiscal choice revealed by Superstorm Sandy, but it deserves a wider reading. One of the casualties of Hurricane Sandy is the premise that America’s biggest economic problem is deficit reduction. That’s because the United States just became a much larger version of the Netherlands [...] As [...]