“Happy New Year” may seem an inappropriate cry as America balances on the edge of governments’ financial cliffs.  We’ve been edging toward this danger for two generations.  The reason is simple; politicians have strong incentives to provide current benefits and promise payments in some distant future.  That future is ever closer. The politics of this […]

Despite gains in employment and a drop in the jobless rate in November, the labor force data released Friday were disturbing. They showed a drop of 350,000 in the number of people in the labor force, a big decline for one month and an extension of a troubling trend. Here is the bigger picture: the […]

This article appeared in New York Post on December 3, 2012. Washington is consumed with wrangling over how to deal with the specter of big automatic tax hikes that will hit Jan. 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire. It’s also the day that the sequester kicks in, which is the budget-wonk term for an automatic process […]

Introduction by John Baden:  Ramona and I often are out of town on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, Election Day. Since we are likely to be gone, we are registered to receive “absentee ballots.” How easy they are; mark, sign, stuff into envelopes, put on a stamp, and we’ve done a small portion of […]