Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, causing interest rates to spike. 
This is nonsense and it demonstrates how much at [...]

Nouriel Roubini, writing in the New York Daily News , said on Sunday that “unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses” given the likelihood of a job less recovery. This was as gloomy a piece as I have seen from Roubini in the past few months. He has clearly become more downbeat about [...]

Today, I want to run a few thoughts by you courtesy of John Mauldin.  In his recent weekly newsletter, he makes a number of points I have made here over the past few weeks and comes to a similar conclusion about the weakness of recovery and the likelihood of a double dip recession.
John Mauldin, Best-Selling [...]

The motivating factor?  this article in Politico:
President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which [...]

L. Randall Wray has a post up at New Deal 2.0 which puts forward an idea which is pretty innovative. I would label it a private sector replacement for unemployment insurance. It’s the kind of thinking that might bring Obama out of a policy cul-de-sac as the economy hemorrhages jobs.
Let me present an excerpted version [...]

The following is a re-print of the latest monthly newsletter from Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners, published with the express permission of the author. Visit www.arpllp.com to learn more about Absolute Return Partners. You can reach the firm by email at info@arpllp.com.
This post on taxes and budget deficits should remind one of three recent [...]

When I read Ed’s recent piece “Japan: stimulus without reform leads to a policy cul de sac,” I couldn’t help but think he is wrong about Japan.
Supporting aggregate demand
The problem is taxes. In Japan, taxes are too high relative to the desire for spending and savings. Policy makers need to stop taking so many yen [...]

It is refreshing to read the foreign press because they have decidedly different takes on issues.Whether you agree or not, it is important to hear those views.
The Swiss are very negative on the U.S. and their tax fight against UBS. This has them dredging up pass legal skirmishes. Here’s an article from the Swiss [...]

The U.S. has been using the weakness of the UBS banking franchise to shake down the organization for the names of American clients suspected of using the bank to dodge taxes in the United States. As far as the Swiss government is concerned, this would set a bad precedent in the Swiss banking community where [...]

Here’s a good segment from CNBC with an interview from two city mayors, the mayor of El Centro, CA that has 26.9% unemployment, the highest in the nation, and the mayor of Flint, MI, which is imploding due to the decline in the U.S. car industry.

 
Interestingly, CNBC has another article on its website showing [...]