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The CapCom Debate, Round 4
Tweet Share on Facebook April 12, 2007 Comment (14)It's Round 4 of the inaugural Capital Commerce slugfest between Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics, an economics and investing consulting firm, and Barry Ritholtz, proprietor of Ritholtz Research & Analytics. In addition to being practitioners of the "dismal science" and finding much to fault in each other's analyses, they're bloggers: Luskin writes The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid, and Ritholtz authors The Big Picture.
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The CapCom Debate, Round 3
Tweet Share on Facebook April 11, 2007 Comment (3)It's Round 3 of the inaugural Capital Commerce debate. The pugilists: Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics, an economics and investing consulting firm, and Barry Ritholtz, proprietor of Ritholtz Research & Analytics. The bullish Luskin writes a popular blog, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid, while the bearish Ritholtz has an equally popular blog, The Big Picture.
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The CapCom Debate, Round 2
Tweet Share on Facebook April 10, 2007 Comment (1)The inaugural Capital Commerce debate between two economist/bloggers, one a bull and the other a bear, moves into its second round. The combatants are Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics, an economics and investing consulting firm, and Barry Ritholtz, proprietor of Ritholtz Research & Analytics.
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The Capital Commerce Debate: Round 1
Tweet Share on Facebook April 9, 2007 Comment (1)Will the housing slowdown tank the rest of the economy, or will job and income growth continue to support and eventually strengthen the current expansion? These are just two of the critical questions that will be vigorously analyzed and argued this week in the inaugural Capital Commerce debate.
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Jobs Numbers Are Good News for the Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2007 CommentGot to like the fresh jobs data from the Labor Department. It's perhaps the best sign yet that while the imploding housing market may yet kill America's current economic expansion, it won't happen anytime soon. Nonfarm payrolls rose a stronger than expected 180,000 in March. What's more, the prior two months' payrolls readings were revised higher by a total of 32,000 to a combined 275,000–as has happened the previous nine months.
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Romney Adviser: Cut Taxes for Companies, Not Kids
Tweet Share on Facebook April 5, 2007 CommentWhat kind of economic policy advice is Mitt Romney getting? One of the people doing some idea work for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and current 2008 GOP presidential hopeful, is Cesar Conda. Conda is former assistant for domestic policy under Vice President Cheney and a longtime policy wonk around Washington, D.C.
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What President Hillary Clinton Might Mean for Taxes, Trade, and Business
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2007 CommentShe tops most Democratic primary polls, she has outraised every other presidential candidate, and she's even the top choice in the online betting markets to be our next commander in chief. So if you're a political junkie, you can't help but wonder, "What would a Hillary Clinton presidency look like?"
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How Giuliani Can Use Taxes to Win Over Abortion Foes
Tweet Share on Facebook April 3, 2007 CommentRudy Giuliani's strategy to win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination seems fairly straightforward: 1) use his 9/11 "America's mayor" reputation to win the national-security conservatives; 2) promote his record of reforming New York City--including cutting taxes and balancing the budget--to win fiscal conservatives; 3) make himself acceptable to social conservatives by promising to appoint Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito who just might vote to toss out Roe v. Wade. Of course, it's appealing to that last group that is most problematic for Giuliani given his liberal record on social issues, particularly abortion. (And it's Fred Thompson's simultaneous appeal to all of those groups that has helped generate presidential buzz for the actor-politician.)
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Giuliani, Forbes, and the Flat Tax
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2007 Comment"I've talked to a few of the presidential candidates, and it just baffles me," Dick Armey told me last week. The Republican former House majority leader now runs Freedom Works, a small-government advocacy group. What "baffles" Armey is the unwillingness of any of the major GOP presidential candidates to embrace major new tax cuts, particularly radical tax reform such as a flat or consumption tax. "Steve Forbes ran on the flat tax in 1996 and scared the other candidates half to death, even though he ended up losing in the primaries."
