Congress Passes Healthcare – I Told You So
This evening, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Obama’s healthcare bill. Two months ago, I was the odd man out on a Business News Network panel (watch video). The day after the Massachusetts...
View ArticleCanada-US Income Tax
This blog’s readers will not be surprised at me questioning Neil Reynolds (although my last post on him was somewhat complimentary.) However, his latest Globe and Mail column was organized around an...
View ArticleAltucher’s Home Economics
Among TV financial pundits, I enjoy watching James Altucher. I have particularly appreciated his advocacy of no-nonsense quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, as opposed to the half...
View ArticleBending the Laffer Curve
Arthur Laffer had a boldly titled op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse.” This piece has been invoked at least once every ten minutes on each subsequent...
View ArticleDepressing Protectionism?
The notion that tariffs caused the Great Depression has been repeatedly invoked in opposition to allegedly protectionist policies and to press ahead with deregulatory “free trade” deals. Also, the...
View ArticleA Geithner Put? – Kudlow Spins the Rally
Whenever the stock market falls, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow reliably blames the Obama administration’s allegedly anti-business policies. But when the market was rising on Obama’s watch, Kudlow generally did...
View ArticleCorporate Canada’s Recovery: More Cash, Less Investment
There has been a persistent drumbeat in the American business press about corporations accumulating cash. The argument is that, while corporations are making solid profits now, they are not investing...
View ArticleMore Unemployment = More EI
For the first time in eight months, the number of Employment Insurance (EI) recipients increased in May. We already knew from the Labour Force Survey that unemployment had increased by just over 8,000...
View ArticleStaples Recovery
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) edged up 0.1% in May. Annualized output was $1,231 billion, still below the pre-crisis peak of $1,241 billion in July 2008 but well above the trough of $1,186 billion in...
View ArticleWe Don’t Need No Education
James Altucher posted an interesting article and video making the case against sending your children to university. I commend him for questioning the credo that everyone should go to university,...
View ArticleWhat Should the US Federal Reserve Do?
With the US on the brink of a relapse into recession or, at best, a period of very slow growth and rising unemployment, all eyes are on the Federal Reserve. After all, it seems to be the only show in...
View ArticlePlan B for Obama
Here is a good piece by Tom Palley in the FT Economists Forum on where the Obama Administration should be moving in terms of economic (though I am not holding my breath until the economic team is...
View ArticleNeil Reynolds’ Free Lunch
Neil Reynolds’ latest Globe column promotes the myth of costless tax cuts by replicating Kurt Hauser’s month-old Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Hauser’s Law” is the notion that American federal tax...
View ArticleFrom Wall Street to the White House
Sometimes the crudest forms of Marxist analysis of the relationship between class and politics make the most sense. Read this scorching commentary by Simon Johnson – the former IMF Chief Economist...
View ArticleThe State of Working America
There are some pretty cool charts to play with in today’s release of the interactive version of this biannual report from the Economic Policy Institute.
View ArticleProfessors’ Salaries
Yesterday, Alex Usher blogged at the Globe and Mail’s web site about the salaries of Canadian university professors. He argues that professors in Canada are now paid better than professors in the...
View ArticleA Call for Capital Controls
Today, the Global Development and Environment Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies released the following statement signed by more than 250 economists, including a couple of Progressive...
View ArticleCorporate Tax Giveaway to the U.S.
A few months ago, I tore a strip off Barrie McKenna’s column on internal trade. But today I write to praise his column on corporate taxes: U.S.-based companies . . . are taxed by the Internal Revenue...
View ArticleCorporate Tax Giveaway to the IRS
The main objection to my argument about the treasury transfer effect is that American companies do not actually repatriate their Canadian profits and pay US corporate tax on them. As The Globe...
View ArticlePotashCorp, US Regulators and Bruce Johnstone
Multinational corporations generally provide more detail to the US Security and Exchange Commission than in their Canadian annual reports. Thank goodness for American disclosure requirements. Along...
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