This whole mess over the Reinhart & Rogoff study on debt-to-GDP levels is still being sorted out. If you’ll remember, their study showed that once a country reaches a debt-to-GDP level of around 90%, economic activity starts to slow. The argument is that lenders will stop buying the country’s bonds thinking they may not be [...]

The sequester has so far not caused any major problems. Concern about air travel, something that mostly affects the affluent, has been the only issue so far. And Congress put a stop to that. The cuts in government spending have largely gone unnoticed. In fact, the overall reduction in government spending we’ve witnessed for a [...]

The National Football League should go down in history as the purest monopoly ever. Nevermind De Beers, Standard Oil, or Boardwalk & Park Place. The NFL is in charge. Here’s why: In order to become a monopoly you have to take control of the market you’re in. The NFL did that in the late 60s [...]

Technology played the biggest role it has ever had in an American civilian incident. Gizmodo highlights some of the tech including bomb-defusing robots and infrared cameras. Perhaps most useful have been all the cameras that captured these suspects. Security cameras at department stores, smartphones, and the mapping tools of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Twitter and [...]

The world of economics is filled with all kinds of research. Economists are always trying to figure out how the economy actually works. We can observe it, and to a degree, influence it. But our understand is still very limited, because we aren’t able to really control or manipulate it. Economists are always releasing studies [...]

If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you’re now officially late. Although it’s kind of a hidden secret that there’s no penalty to file late so long as you don’t owe. But don’t tell anyone. If you were a good citizen you took care of your taxes months ago. If you’re like me you just [...]

Taken literally, such a headline probably wouldn’t surprise many people. But this is actually a good thing. New York City has a problem. They’ve got a lot of kids that end up in jail. And about half of them are very likely to end up in jail again. This is counterintuitive to the point of [...]

We’re coming up on the wooden anniversary of the bailouts this year. Apparently to celebrate five years you give wood. Back in 2008 our government bailout out a financial system that had suddenly locked up. No bank would lend to another, and they all had toxic assets on their balance sheets. Some banks died, most [...]