Federal Government

Effect of Debt Ceiling Compromise on Economic Forecasts

August 2, 2011 Economics

My working assumptions have been that any deal on the debt ceiling would impair an economic recovery. The estimates are now beginning to come in. Here’s Macroadvisors, Debt Ceiling Deal: Little Fiscal Drag in ’12, Big Risk in ’13. And here’s Brad DeLong’s response. We’ll add more as we find them.

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I’m not the only one

July 28, 2011 Budget

Lawrence O’Donnell just said the solution would be for Boehner to get the Democrats and about 50 “not-crazy” Republicans to pass the debt ceiling increase. Same strategy as I mentioned here. But then he pointed out that Boehner has never done anything to draw Democratic votes. Oh well.

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Postponed House Vote on Debt Ceiling

July 28, 2011 Budget

At this point, the House Republicans has postponed the vote on Boehner’s bill extending the debt ceiling and cutting the budget. Right now, the Republicans don’t have the votes to even pass their own bill. Reminds me of an incident years ago in the NYS Assembly. The parties and positions were the inverse of what […]

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Beware of political gimmicks in public finance … they metastasise

July 28, 2011 Budget

I keep thinking that this debt ceiling debacle is the result of a political gimmick whose origin is long forgotten. During decades of work in public finance, I’ve certainly seen more than my share. Somebody probably thought it was an essentially harmless but useful political symbol to buy a few votes on a budget or […]

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More on what happens to states if the Federal Government does not increase the debt ceiling

July 20, 2011 Debt

Here’s another analysis of what happens to states, this one with an interactive map and two scenarios if the Federal government can’t get its act together. We might get some state and local defaults after all.

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If the Federal Government decides not to pay its bills

July 19, 2011 Default

Mathew Yglesias does a nice summary of how the pain (and whatever) will roll downhill if the Federal Government decides not to pay its bills. Actually, Yglesias says “can’t pay its bills.” I think it’s a matter of Congressional choice. Note which states are most likely to suffer the most.

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It won’t be just a Federal default

July 12, 2011 Debt

Even without a default on debt payments, if the Federal government fails to increase the limit and constrains its outflows because they can no longer borrow and if the crisis goes long enough, there will nevertheless be governmental defaults. They’ll happen downstream in state and local governments which are dependent on Federal funds. Most obviously, […]

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What happened to newspapers?

July 12, 2011 Budget

Interesting article on what’s happened to the business model of newspapers at Virulent Word of Mouse. There’s a lot of discussion of the mechanics and technical developments that pulled advertising into Google’s world, including … And that’s despite the fact that Google was not selling ads at the beginning. A little later, Google invented one […]

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