Free Republic

“We are sitting on a time bomb,” the mortgage analyst said — a huge increase in unconventional home loans like balloon mortgages taken out by consumers who cannot qualify for regular mortgages. The high payments, he continued, “are just beginning to come due and a lot of people who were betting interest rates would come down by now risk losing their homes because they can’t pay the debt.” He would have given great testimony at the current Senate hearings on subprime mortgage lending. The only problem is, he said it in 1981 — when soon after several of the alternative...

Obama Taps Guy Who Thinks His Tax Credit Won't Work To Be His Top Economic Aide Joe Weisenthal Sep. 10, 2010, 4:27 AM Not a huge surprise: Obama is hiring Austan Goolsbee to replace outgoing top economic aide Christina Romer. Goolsbee's been in the administration for awhile, and is frequently on TV, so this is a logical choice. Just this week, though, folks discovered an old paper of Goolsbee's in which he slams the type of business tax breaks that Obama proposed this week. Hopefully the first TV interview he does will see him asked about that.[snip]

Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, took part in the "DC's Funniest Celebrity" contest last night at a Washington comedy club. Goolsbee won the contest with a routine that mimicked the famous "Mr. Subliminal" skits on "Saturday Night Live" in which Goolsbee said something in his normal voice and then revealed his inner thoughts sotto voce. For example, Goolsbee said that veterans of the Obama campaign "share this bond, and we came here because we knew that the president had a lot of things to do. Number one on the list, we wanted to...

Here is video of Obama's economic adviser Austan Goolsbee doing a comedy routine at the Improv. He joked about how they referenced Marxist ideology in deciding what to do with the economy when they came to power in January. He also referred to Sarah Palin as a "Wingnut." He also joked about Sen. Ben Nelson being a "Benedict Arnold," and "stabbing them in the back." He attacked Fox News as the place for people who don't know what they are doing. He also joked about himself being the "future Fed Chair." He compared Obama to "Jimmy Carter" and "Millard Fillmore."...

With President Obama expected tomorrow for the North American Leaders' Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, a coalition of American legislators and activists took a message to the Mexican media, denouncing economic partnerships that would undermine national sovereignty and blasting Obama's failure to keep his promises on transparency and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Howard Phillips, chairman of The Conservative Caucus and head of the Coalition to Block the North American Union, spoke to Mexican print, television and radio media about the summit, which was known in previous years as the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership, or...

Conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to R&D significantly exceeds the private rate of return and, therefore, R&D should be subsidized. In the U.S., the government has directly funded a large fraction of total R&D spending. This paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity. The majority of R&D spending is actually just salary payments for R&D workers. Their labor supply, however, is quite inelastic so when the government funds R&D, a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages. Using CPS data on wages of...

That expense in time and money is as much a part of the tax burden on Americans as the check that goes to the federal government. And unlike the tax payment, this part of the tax burden doesn't generate any revenue for the government, though part of it goes into H&R Block's pocket. It is, in the words of the economists, pure deadweight loss. Which is why the I.R.S. should eliminate it. With a small adjustment in processing procedures, the revenue service could send you a tax form already filled out with the information it has for you — a...