Over at the New York Times is a great graphic that walks through how exactly all the mortgage/housing stuff works out exactly, and why so many companies are now in so much trouble. It is too big to include here, so click this link to see it.

A great post from Mark Thoma that needs to be read in its entirety. It follows:

I hardly ever read Jonah Goldberg’s columns, but I scanned this one and, though there are lots of “maybes” scattered about, I think he’s actually serious. The GOP elites strike again:

Too uninformed to vote?, by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary, LA Times: …Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens? … If you threaten to take the vote away from the certifiably uninformed, voter turnout will almost certainly get a boost.

Voter turnout will get a boost? An increase the price of something does not, except in the most unusual of circumstances, cause a “boost” in the quantity demanded. Thus, increasing the price of voting by requiring people to pass a test will exclude some people who would have voted otherwise and, since it’s unlikely those who get excluded would be scattered randomly across the population of voters, this will exclude particular groups of people from the political process.

I don’t see why individuals or groups should be excluded from expressing their preferences in the voting booth over, say, issues such as the war or building a local school or anything else just because they don’t know how many years a senator serves, how cloture works, or precisely how a bill becomes a law.

If we are going to go this route, why not test for knowledge of the issues too, not just the functions of government? Thus, when a vote on tax issues comes up, if someone like Jonah “Economics makes my brain itch” Goldberg checks the box that says “tax cuts pay for themselves,” then he should not be allowed to vote on that issue. We could apply the same rule in the Senate and House. Can’t tell a Sunni from a Shiite? Sit this one out. Don’t know the difference between MySpace and YouTube? No votes for you on digital technology issues. The internet is a “series of tubes” you say? You sit down too. Seems like the president should follow the same rules as everyone else, doesn’t it? So, for example, if the president can’t speak English properly, a word like “nuclear” perhaps, no signing bills in this area until competency has been established. This is, after all, an English speaking country. Vice president too. Shoot someone in the face with a shotgun? That shows a certain lack of competency, so let’s leave firearm related legislation to someone else.

I’m not serious of course, we should make it easier to vote, not harder, and we should do our best at education, but I don’t understand the desire to make it more difficult for others to participate in the political process.

[via Ezra Klein]

A very cool map of the 2004 election results that did much more than just color a whole state or area red/blue based on who won there (even if it was just by 1 or 2 percent).

The map:

The explanation from the source:

In this map, each red, green, or blue pixel represents 1,000 votes for Bush, Nader, or Kerry respectively. When there are too many votes to fit in an area, they “spill over” to nearby land. For example, Florida’s votes “spill over” into Georgia. This means that votes are not necessarily exactly where they belong, but they will be in the right general area and no block of votes will “hide” any other block.

An older post that I had marked to read, I finally have. A few weeks back there was a debate among the Econ blogs about comments by Clinton/Obama on Chinese revaluation. Tim Duy made some great additions and wanted to highlight it here:

I don’t think that any economist really believes that relative prices do not affect demand. The issue of demand itself, however, is not truly the end game of those pushing for RMB revaluation.  What is the end game?

The end game is a boost to US job growth via an improvement in the US trade deficit. On this point, however, you need to make three additional assumptions.  One is that if the Chinese lessen support for the RMB, their decreased demand for dollar denominated assets is not offset by an increased demand from some other source.  In other words, there is a substantial drop in US capital inflows. The second is that the change in import prices results in a substitution effect to US produced goods and only a minor income effect – because the mix of prices we face is higher, we reduce overall consumption. Decreasing demand for foreign goods does not necessarily imply an increasing demand for equivalent domestic goods. Maybe we just don’t buy the flat screen tv at all. Finally, that there is excess capacity in the US to satisfy the increased demand from the substitution effect. 

This is a much more complex subject than just “if Chinese prices go up, US gets more jobs”,” and it would behoove us to remember that. His whole post is here.

Lots of links around to a diary post over at DailyKos. A reader there wrote to her Congresswoman, Ellen Tauscher (D-CA10), encouraging her to seek/support impeaching the AG. The Congresswoman wrote back this:

The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the president in a non-impeachable office. Unless convicted of an illegal act, the Attorney General cannot be removed from office without the president asking for or accepting his resignation. However, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as I review the circumstances surrounding recent allegations of impropriety within the Justice Department.

Sincerely,

Ellen O. Tauscher
Member of Congress

Now this is wrong. So, so very wrong, but would be understandable from most of America. The minutiae of the Constitution aren’t a top priority for most, but from a Member of Congress (as she signed her reply) should know better!

I give you Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the united States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

That little “all civil Officers” part? Yeah, that means any high ranking government official, like, I don’t know, a member of the Cabinet? Say, the Attorney General?

I’m going to cry for a while now, here is the link to the DailyKos post.

Imagine with me: you get a credit card when you turn 25. You can spend as much on this credit card without having to pay any of it ever, but your children will have to pay the bill. You might use it every now and then, hoping by spending on it you will in fact make their lives better and allow them to pay it back with ease. You certainly wouldn’t abuse it for frivolous things. Now imagine this is a graph of that credit card in the US for the last 40 years (of all those adults):

So there is your credit card bill folks. We all love to spend without and repercussions, but when our kids are the ones bearing our burdens a few more percent in taxes (especially for those who are already not paying what they should) isn’t going to seem like something we should be throwing a hissy-fit over.Graph made by cactus from Angry Bear. Relevant post here.

I have been cursorily following the housing bubbles bursting across the country, but this graph from the LA Times today, via Kevin Drum, is just amazing:

From Kevin’s post here.

Great post from Matthew Yglesias about how every public policy initiative you talk about quickly turns to a discussion of monetary costs… except for war. Some great snark ensues:

Expanding SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) may be cheap and popular, but you’d better make it cheap enough to finance through gimmicks like cigarette taxes and so forth, because you just can’t unleash the spigots of general revenue on something as trivial as making children not die when they fall ill.

His full post is here.

A sad, sad story in the New York Times today. It seems Fort Lewis in Washington state has decided that having a memorial service for each soldier isn’t worth it and instead they will just lump them all together at the end of the month. The story acknowledges that soldiers and their families ask more from bases these days than they have in the past, but it still strikes me as ridiculously insensitive and, well, I don’t even know what. The money quote:

Ms. Rothwell said she opposed monthly services. “Individuals gave their lives,” she said. “But if you have services just once a month, the other 29 days you don’t have to think about it. Well, isn’t that convenient.”

The full story is here.

The other day I attempted to explain to a friend exactly how the GOP was filibustering and why it was so ridiculous and nefarious. It’s a very hard subject to convey effectively without it getting complicated way too quickly. I wish I had had this chart: