Clive Crook

The Bipartisan Policy Center crunches the debt-ceiling numbers. It finds that the the date on which the Treasury will no longer be able to pay all its bills--the X Date--will be "no earlier than August 2nd and probably no later than August 9th." What would happen next? There is no precedent, says the BPC. After looking carefully at the Treasury's projected daily outflows and inflows, the presentation concludes that federal spending would have to be cut immediately… More »

The US corporate tax code encourages US firms to retain profits abroad. Their taxes are deferred, and only payable when the money comes home. This is a tax-avoidance opportunity and an artificial inducement to firms to invest abroad rather than in the United States. Robert Pozen has a proposal: move to a modified territorial system. To reform the current system, Congress should exempt from U.S. taxes corporate income earned in foreign countries with an… More »

Should justices move with popular opinion? One law professor says yes. More »

The White House says Obama is more interested in results than marketing. That's no way to win in politics. More »

Christine Lagarde is the new No. 1, but who should be No. 2? More »

Disappointing but unsurprising that Christine Lagarde has got the top job at the IMF. I don't say this because I thought she was a weak candidate or won't do a good job, By all accounts she is very capable. The sad thing is that even under these extraordinary circumstances, it is business as usual when it comes to running such a critical institution. If this was not the moment to make a break with the old arrangements, and to declare that these positions are no… More »

Re-arming US fiscal policy for aggressive use the next time we need it is not just a matter of controlling debt in the medium and longer term. It also requires structural improvements in other aspects of fiscal capacity: specifically, more powerful automatic stabilisers. In this FT column, I suggest three possiblities: a national sales tax, curbs on tax relief for debt, and a much-expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance program. More »

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has created a useful tool for comparing the various budget-reform plans. A recent CRFB blog post on the long-term budget outlook also has helpful explanations of the differences between the CBO's "extended" and "alternative" baselines. I agree with CRFB that the most plausible starting-point probably lies between the two. (The extended baseline isn't going to happen. The more pessimistic alternative fiscal scenario… More »

The fallacy of making "isolationists" out of people who are simply tired of war More »

The speech was a political success, but his strategy seems questionable More »

The CBO's new report on the long-term budget outlook is gloomy reading. Something has to give, is the message. CBO director Douglas Elmendorf summed it up this way in a recent presentation at the NY Fed: Given the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care, the United States cannot achieve all of the following objectives in the future:Keep federal revenues at their average share of GDP during the past 40 years. Provide the same sorts of benefits… More »

The most alarming possibility about the faltering US recovery is that economic traits once regarded as strengths might have become poisonous. By European standards, the US has a low-friction labor market. Workers are let go quickly in downturns then quickly rehired in the upswing. The drawbacks are obvious but, the argument has always gone, flexibility and mobility have made the economy more adaptable--so growth has been good and structural unemployment low (again… More »

Subjects ranging from the future of NATO to the emergence of a new global "rockstar" More »

A new column for the Financial Times on US fiscal incompetence--or should that be paralysis, or recklessness, or dishonesty...? The prospects for getting it right (by which I mean maintaining or increasing fiscal expansion the near term, while moving now to lock in fiscal retrenchment later) look slim. The political problem can be simply stated:Democrats have no fiscal plan, and Republicans have a fiscal plan that not even they like and whose details they would… More »

Pulled punches left Mitt Romney in command in Manchester on Monday More »

Yes, what he did was bad, but the congressman's denouncers have come off as sanctimonious More »

Problems dissolve under his magic plan More »

Peter Diamond's decision to withdraw from contention for a seat on the Fed board is a very low moment in US politics. Diamond is an indisputably brilliant economist with no ideological baggage and highly relevant expertise--contrary to what his GOP critics say, and as he explains in his NYT article. It ought to be shocking, but it no longer is, that a man of his distinction could not get confirmed to the position. At times the US seems a country hell-bent… More »

And if it is, what do we do about it? My column this week for the FT says: look to housing-market policy (better late than never) and to the Fed.The stalling recovery, and the evident incapacity of Congress and the administration to respond, should silence talk of a rapid exit from QE2 and put QE3 back on the table. The case for additional easing is strong. A responsible central bank is always mindful of the risk of inflation - but with wages showing no sign of… More »

Roger Pielke Jr offers some comments on the new German energy policy More »