The Fiscal Cliff

• Stan Collender thinks we’re going over it. *
• White House Makes Agressive Opening Bid in Fiscal Slope Negotiations
• The GOP is full of $#!%.  (Not to mention negotiating in bad faith.)

Economics

• Taxes and Transfers Have Become Less Effective at Reducing Inequality
• A rational conservative’s analysis of tax cuts, tax rates, and tax shares
• Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Now Than in the 80s
• Jared Bernstein:  A Few More Thoughts on the Bad Idea of Raising the Medicare Eligibility Age
• Myth busting:  No, the Fed is not monetizing the debt. Overall the Fed holds only about 15% if all marketable treasuries.  And follow-up post here.
• Is Taxing Capital OK?  (A couple clips from other blogs posted by Brad DeLong.)
• Dept. of “Well, What Did You Expect?”:  Local governments who give corporations tax breaks to locate there typically end up getting a raw deal.**

Politics

• Revenge of the Reality-Based Community
• Matt Taibbi marvels at Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who was almost certainly lying through his teeth while being deposed:

“In an impressive display of balls, Moynihan essentially replies that Bank of America is a big company, and it’s unrealistic to ask the CEO to know about all of its parts, even the ones that are multi-billion-dollar suckholes about which the firm has been engaged in nearly constant litigation from the moment it acquired the company.”

• The Benghazi issue is a MacGuffin.  People should be wary of Susan Rice because of her connection to the Keystone XL pipeline.  Details here and here.
• Lest you forget:  Voter suppression in Florida
• Bruce Bartlett on who should replace Tim Geithner.

* But suppose negotiations drag on into late January? i.e., we end up over the cliff for about a month?  How bad will be impact be?

** There’s a rule in poker, “If you can’t spot the sucker at the table, then it’s you.”  Same reasoning applies here I think.

You’ve probably noticed that, to date, I haven’t offered much commentary here on the blog.  There are two principal reasons why:  a) It takes time to write something worth reading and, frankly, I’ve got enough going on that it’s a challenge just to read what I believe I need to read in order to stay an informed citizen let alone write my own commentary on current events and b) There’s a lot of thoughtful commentary out there already.  If someone has said something well then no sense in my reinventing the wheel.  With respect to b), last weekend a friend recommended The Weekly Sift.  I’ll recommend it here.  This week Doug has very thoughful posts on war weariness in Israel and Gaza, the “skills gap” employers are facing (Spoiler alert:  There isn’t one.  They just don’t want to pay market wages.), lack of investment in public goods, and a number of other things.  You should give it a read.