Blog
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
Carlo Cottarelli Joins the Announcement Effect Club
You might have missed it yesterday, but during the second meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, IMF Director of...
OECD on the Fiscal Outlook: The Way Forward
The OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based think tank for the 31 richest countries) released its twice-a...
Translating Dr. Summers’ Econospeak: Are Budget Deficits Good or Bad?
Larry Summers gave a very interesting and thoughtful talk in Washington recently (May 24). But it was delivered in High Oracular Econospeak, so many...
Fiscal Targets: Why We Need Both Medium and Long-Term Targets
The President's Fiscal Commission has been charged with proposing: "Recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the...
CBO Estimates the Effects of the Stimulus
CBO recently put out its quarterly estimate of the macroeconomic effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). They found that...
Senate Will Vote Today on War Supplemental -- and Paying for It
A close vote is expected today to end debate in the senate on a $59 billion supplemental that includes funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan...
Spending Cuts Make Good Offsets Too
The extenders bill the House is considering would cost $190 billion between 2010-2020. Only $56 billion of that would be offset. Emergency...
Live Webcast: Fiscal Commission's Second Meeting
The President's Fiscal Commission is holding its second public meeting, which is being webcast live on the White House's website. We've embedded the...
The Budgetary Impacts of Fed Actions
Yesterday CBO issued a very interesting report on the budgetary impact of the Federal Reserve's actions to address the economic and financial crisis...
Estimates of the Wyden-Gregg Tax Reform Bill
A few months back, we discussed a comprehensive proposal by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Judd Gregg (R-NH), the Bipartisan Tax Fairness and...
Aging and Entitlements
The U.S. Census Bureau came out with with a report this month on aging in the United States. Not to anyone's surprise, the report found that between...
Will Congress Embrace Spending Restraints?
As Congress debates hundreds of billion of dollars of new deficit-spending this week, they may also begin considering two proposals which can actually...