Just back from a rousing debate on CNBC on the IRS scandal (a tough way to start the day but always a pleasure to mix it up with the the Squawk team and the smart and balanced Tony Fratto). Key points, as I see them:

-- While the...

Nope, I'm not going to defend the IRS, which appears to have acted in ways wholly inconsistent with their mandate for unbiased investigations into, in this case, whether certain political groups should receive tax-exempt status. It is unclear how high up the chain of command these untoward actions went, but...

Here's an interesting piece worth slogging through on ways in which policy changes implied by traditional economic analysis can skew power in ways that make a lot of people a lot worse off. The prose is a bit dense and opaque, but the point and the many historical...

I really don't like to be cynical -- therein lies the way to dark and gnarled soul -- so I apologize in advance for this cynical statement (but keep reading... hope is on the way): whatever D.C. is debating right now, you can rest assured that it's mostly B.S., and...

Payrolls increased by 165,000 last month and the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.5 percent, in a jobs report that painted a considerably brighter picture than last month's version. In fact, the disappointing 88,000 payroll gain for March was revised up in today's report to 138,000, and in February, new...

The Fed announced today that they'll continue to be the only ones in town trying to do something about the stubbornly high unemployment rate:

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that its stimulus campaign would press forward at the same pace it has maintained since December, putting to...

You want my advice, you should pour a tall cup-a-Joe and settle in to read this essay by Sean Reardon in Sunday's New York Times on education and wealth. He covers a lot of ground, but the theme that resonated most with me is one I've stressed often...

Well, well. It appears that both the Senate and House have voted to end sequester-imposed furloughs of air traffic controllers, just in time for the weekend.

You choose: Is this bipartisan support to mitigate one of the noxious effects of sequestration, which I and others have been tracking?...

There's no question that Reinhart and Rogoff have been excessively pilloried for the mistakes in their influential paper on how high debt/GDP ratios allegedly slow growth. Very few economists get the "honor" of the Colbert treatment (may I never, ever be so honored...). It's fair to say that they...

I had a rousing debate on Kudlow tonight about the Fisker story that's got a lot of folks like Larry K crying "Solyndra squared!"

Not so fast, dude. Brad Plumer covers the details here, but Fisker Automotive is a small company that has been trying to...

Heading out to the left coast, in the air with what looks like a pretty good Wi-Fi connection.

Re: sequester, definitely saw some delays at D.C. National -- spoke to the folks sending flights to NYC and they said that backups were already starting, driven by the furloughs of 1,500...

A critical concern of our time is not simply our high levels of income inequality and their negative impact on opportunity and mobility. It's how inequality and immobility become entrenched in the system -- how they replicate.

In a nation like ours, where the flow of money into politics keeps...

Getting back to full employment -- not debt, deficits, sequester, debt ceilings -- is what we ought to be talking about (along with R&R, of course). I'm happy to say, in fact, that in my travels outside this benighted town (D.C.), it's the question I get asked most...

Here are a few observations on the new immigration reform proposal, with an emphasis on a part that I think is particularly important and largely overlooked given the emphasis on citizenship: the consideration of labor market impacts and the introduction of mechanisms to control them.

Before getting into some policy...

I just read that Goldman Sachs posted a profit of $2.2 billion in the first quarter, "... driven by strength in its investment banking business as well as its investing and lending unit."

And they're mere pikers compared to their banking brethren:

Across Wall Street, banks are showing...

Up early, amply caffeinated, and already mixed it up with Joe Kernan on CNBC on the president's budget due out later today, though details are trickling out.

Here are the White House's bullets:

• Creates jobs by responsibly paying for investments in education, manufacturing, clean energy, infrastructure, and small business.
• Includes...

If we wanted to target the persistent slack in the labor market, though I can't see any signs that we do, we shouldn't just target the unemployment rate; we should also go after the underemployment rate. Since it captures the important dimension of not just do you have a job,...

Payrolls were up only 88,000 last month, well below expectations, and while the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.6 percent, the decline in the jobless rate was due not to job gains, but to people leaving the labor market. In fact, the share of the population in the workforce --...

Had a rousing and often substantive debate last night sponsored by the group Intelligence Squared. My partner was the great and eloquent Karen Kornbluh (listen to the podcast -- I really thought Karen did a great job merging morality, compassion, and the facts of the case); the opposing...

A quick note on an aspect of the recent stock market melt up that's gotten some, though maybe not enough, attention. As I and some others stress here, the recent rise in stock prices is largely a function of historically high corporate earnings (derived in part by squeezing...