The Federal Reserve did not only vow to maintain a zero interest-rate policy through the end of 2014 (a policy that has its critics, incidentally). They also set an explicit interest rate target for the first time ever, as far as I can tell. The Federal Reserve took the historic step on Wednesday of setting [...]

You buy a hamburger from me and I give you a piece of hard black leather on a bun. You protest and I say, no, I’m still calling it a hamburger, so you got what you asked for. You start running around telling everyone I sell leather as hamburgers, and I get my local fact-checking [...]

Today, the Senate will vote on a motion to proceed on a bill addressing currency manipulators, targeted mainly at China. Reuters writes about it with the cynical headline “Senators court 2012 voters with China currency,” but yes, I think they’ve calculated that a bill that would save money, create millions of jobs over time, and [...]

Celinda Lake’s latest round of polling for Politico shows that a majority of the public would support public works spending. And the President endorsed the sentiment of that yesterday when he told a crowd of union members in Detroit that there are 1 million unemployed construction workers looking to get dirty. They also want jobs! [...]

Paul Krugman waltzed into the foreclosure fraud settlement today, with a column that even John McCain found himself agreeing with. That’s because it criticizes the Obama Administration for letting the banks get off easy in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and in preparing to offer a settlement on foreclosure fraud that amounts to a [...]

Paul Krugman had a good column today on how America needed to end its “learned helplessness” on the jobs crisis. He cited multiple options of things the government could do right now to create jobs, which would of course increase government revenue and over time reduce the deficit. Among them were such ideas as a [...]

The only thing wrong with Paul Krugman’s column today is that he doesn’t mention David Brooks by name. But you can see Brooks in every inch of this critique of whiny Republicans who, when challenged on their nonsense, retreat to the higher moral ground of calling their opponents “uncivil.” Krugman hits on this strategy, which [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 192,000 jobs in February, a decent number, and the topline unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.9%. December and January were revised upwards, each by about 30,000 jobs. Manufacturing, construction and transportation added jobs in February, which is a sign of a robust economy. So in [...]

It’s hardly surprising that Paul Krugman says better what I’ve been saying for a few days about Obama’s thinking on the budget and the economy in general. The important thing, I think, is that he has effectively given up on the idea that the government can do anything to create jobs in a depressed economy. [...]

That’s the sentiment of Paul Krugman’s column today, which makes a crucial distinction amidst this call for civility in the discourse, one I think a lot of people are missing. Sitting in a mixed bipartisan fashion or boy-girl-boy-girl at the State of the Union, or vowing to “come together” after a national tragedy is a [...]

Economic growth, in theory, can solve the two most niggling problems facing the country – unemployment and a soft housing market. Growth can lead to more demand, forcing businesses to hire to keep up the supply. Paradoxically, this would lower corporate profits from 2010, where they hoarded cash. Spending that cash would increase overall growth. [...]