President Obama Remains Distant from Wisconsin Labor Fight

It’s very disappointing to me that the President is keeping the Wisconsin labor movement at arms length.

Ever since the recall wars erupted in this battleground state, the Obama campaign has been faced with a dilemma: How involved does the president get in a polarizing fight with huge national overtones?

Less than two weeks to [...]

A Fable of Moral Mathematics

A wonderful, must-read piece over at Naked Capitalism on the morality of math.  Well, when you put a $ or a € in front of the numbers, at least.  It’s a funny story involving a class and marbles and an economic system run amok.

From her commanding heights at the ECB Teacher promptly begins [...]

Thursday Music: A G is Gone

Nostalgia is nostalgic…  Say what you want about disco, the Bee Gees or any of that, but this song has a bass line that just won’t quit…  Now there’s only one G left.  I haz a sad.

The Real Conspiracy Against Hip Hop

Illdoc on what’s a conspiracy and what’s reality.

An Explosion of Early Voting

According to the Urinal-Sentinel,

Over 450 early voters came out to cast absentee ballots in Milwaukee Monday, exceeding expectations and mirroring the unusually high early voting trends being seen statewide.

“It’s very high for the first day of early voting for any election,” explained Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman. “Generally it’s 10, [...]

New Poll Shows Barrett & Walker In a Dead Heat

Republican chickens are circling the coop…  Will they come home to roost?

In a survey of 472 recall voters conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research from May 19 to 21, Walker leads Barrett 50 to 47 — within the poll’s four-point margin of error.

Most importantly  though…

Barrett leads with independents, 50 percent to [...]

Economic Recovery: You’re Doing It Wrong

So sayeth the IMF in a consultation with the UK:

The hand-off from public to private demand-led growth has not fully materialized. Much of this underperformance relative to earlier expectations is due to transitory commodity price shocks and heightened uncertainty following the intensification of stress in the euro area.

Translation: Your fear of the [...]

Sovereign Debt for Dummies

A great, short, talking-head video featuring Mike Norman, economist and trader who’s been a Wall Street fixture for more than 30 years.  He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.  His blog, Mike Norman Economics is a staple for the MMT crowd.  He’s commenting here about the stupid way people talk about the national debt.

[...]

51% of Americans Need a Lesson in Macroeconomics

I don’t normally cite polls from the grossly biased Rasmussen, but this one was too absurd not to post.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely Voters believe the federal government will go bankrupt and be unable to pay its debt before the federal budget is balanced. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree [...]

“This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the Earth…”

Congressman Daniel Webster (R-FL).

But last week, the Republican-led House voted to eliminate the survey altogether, on the grounds that the government should not be butting its nose into Americans’ homes.

“This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican [...]