News
CNN Money | Unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008
Hiring picked up in February, helping to bring the unemployment rate down to its lowest level since December 2008.
Econ Comments & Analysis
WSJ | Jumping the Sequester
The phrase "jumping the shark" describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester.
Washington Post | Deficits do matter
Dick Cheney and Paul Krugman have declared from opposite sides of the ideological divide that deficits don’t matter, but they simply have it wrong. Reasonable liberals and conservatives can disagree on what role the federal government should play yet still believe that government should resume paying its way.
CBO | Monthly Budget Review
The federal budget deficit was $495 billion for the first five months of fiscal year 2013, $86 billion less than the shortfall recorded for the same period last year, CBO estimates. If lawmakers enacted no further legislation affecting spending or revenues, the federal government would end fiscal year 2013 with a deficit of $845 billion, by CBO’s estimate, compared with $1.1 trillion in 2012.
CATO | Round One Goes to the Budget Hawks
“The budget hawks have defeated the defense hawks.” So read one analyst’s verdict last Friday on the news that, despite months of dire warnings from the Obama administration and the Pentagon’s allies on Capitol Hill, automatic budget cuts to the U.S. Defense Department would go into effect after all. Bill Kristol, the influential editor of the Weekly Standard, was despondent, writing, “the Republican party has, at first reluctantly, then enthusiastically, joined the president on the road to irresponsibility.” But have fiscal scolds really vanquished their neoconservative rivals within the GOP?
