Clive Crook

My column for the Financial Times this week is about immigration policy. What President Obama said in his speech on the subject last week was right: the issue is an "economic imperative". Increased legal immigration raises the productivity of immigrants; encourages capital accumulation; and broadens the tax base. Research has shown that the additional tax revenue from expanded legal immigration outweighs the additional burden of providing public services to… More »

His views make sense, but the former governor has a problem: primary voters don't want to hear him defend the Massachusetts plan More »

IMF head charged with rape, the rich don't get taxed as much, and Mitch Daniels on how libertarians can govern More »

As first act, out with Obamacare. Mitt Romney, USA Today. Tricky to extricate yourself from your most notable achievement. This reprinted article from 2006 in the Boston Globe--"Romney defends health plan to skeptical conservatives"--provides an interesting contrast. (I'll have more to say when I've read Romney's much-anticipated Ann Arbor speech.) History weeps at the partition of India and Pakistan. Michael Barone, Washington Examiner. A great and… More »

Frank Partnoy, a law professor at USD and author of "Infectious Greed", an excellent book on the underlying causes of the financial collapse, comments on the Galleon case. In "The real insider tip from the Galleon verdict" he argues that insider trading may come back stronger from this setback. If you do the maths, given the amount of insider trading, the chances of doing prison time are roughly the same as getting bitten by a great white shark while surfing… More »

One can question the president's sincerity, but he's pushing for the right immigration policies More »

A stylised fact of US political polling is that, national security aside, the price of gas drives presidential approval ratings. Could house prices might be even more important? If they were, it would be hard to prove statistically, since there are no previous episodes of nationally falling house prices. Which is worse for confidence: gas at say $5 a gallon, or another five figures wiped off your net worth? Perhaps the White House should be more worried about… More »

Palin in The Atlantic, Hitchens vs. Chomsky, Heilemann on Obama's Spring, and how the debt ceiling could crush confidence in the U.S. More »

Can Obama use the successful raid as cover to deal with America's long-term fiscal health? More »

It's easy to do and easy to understand: Cap savings for taxpayers and raise federal revenues More »

Probing the GOP budget wiz on fiscal health as senators try to strike a debt-ceiling deal More »

You can change the name, but the fact the remains that Americans know they are engaged in a broad struggle More »

It's a popular fiscal fix, but broadening the tax base makes better economic sense More »

Recent poll numbers made it unsurprising that Canada's Conservatives won yesterday's federal election, but the scale of the win was impressive More »

Why killing the terrorist may change less than we think More »

Why doesn't the president take charge in the big debates? And what does this say about his ability to govern? More »

Just because voters agree with both parties' talking points, that doesn't mean they're idiots More »

The sorry state of the 2012 US presidential election: Obama should be beatable, but Republicans might hand him a win anyway More »

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget sets out some useful analysis of the new White House budget numbers. One main finding is that the president's use of a 12-year budget timescale is a rather significant gimmick. His $4 trillion in savings over 12 years become $2.9 trillion over the standard 10 years; if you then use CBO figures, not White House figures, to reckon the "current policy" baseline, the amount of deficit reduction falls further, to $2.5 … More »

Martin Wolf refers me to this new paper by Paul De Grauwe, The Governance of a Fragile Europe. It very well argued and, I think, entirely convincing. Unless something is done, the prognosis for the eurozone is not good. Here is the abstract: When entering a monetary union, member-countries change the nature of their sovereign debt in a fundamental way, i.e., they cease to have control over the currency in which their debt is issued. As a result, financial… More »