The Census Bureau issued the first results of the 2010 Census this week, showing that the U.S. growth in population in 2000-2010 was only 9.7%, the lowest decennial growth since the 1930s and the second lowest on record. This has modest if beneficial effects on our understanding of where the United States is today. However […]

At this season of goodwill, my thoughts immediately turn to that unsung hero Ebenezer Scrooge, and this year, in view of the subject’s topicality, to his possible thoughts on today’s major economic policy problem of tax reform and budget deficit reduction. One thing immediately springs to mind: he would wish to eliminate the income tax […]

The insouciant approach which President Obama and the US budget negotiators have taken to the federal deficit, adding around $900 billion to deficits over the next two years with no countervailing spending cuts, has been greeted by a sharp rise in Treasury bond yields. This brings into focus a very delicate question: at what point […]

The EU bailout of Ireland and its previous bailout for Greece, when examined closely, bore a distressing resemblance to the 2008 U.S. bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG and Citigroup. The authorities poured more resources into assets that had been shown to be defective, without sufficiently enforcing the painful purging and liquidation that was necessary. By […]