An excellent and timely piece from Bloomberg BusinessWeek:
“When Washington
argues about fiscal policy, it’s really fighting over models. By the time the
White House produces its budget, its Office of Management and Budget has
already modeled what it hopes that budget will do. Majorities in Congress send
their budget resolutions to their own preferred think tanks for modeling, too.
Then, by statute, bills that come out of most committees must receive a
“score”—a modeled result—from the Congressional Budget Office and, for revenue
bills, the Joint Committee on Taxation. The CBO and the JCT have a reputation
for straight-backed probity, but congressional staffers quietly haggle with
both institutions over footnotes.
So Republican
economists model against Democratic economists, with some referee economists in
the middle. You say your tax cuts can be offset by economic growth. Oh, I ask?
Well, are your agents life-cycle or infinitely lived? This is the knife fight
in the kitchen, and it’s how the presumed mortality of imaginary people
determines the size of your tax bill.”
The Second Coming of Reaganomics?
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21710253-donald-trumps-attempt-reaganomics-will-prove-costlier-original
US Dollar and Politics
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/upshot/the-glaring-contradiction-at-the-heart-of-donald-trumps-economic-policy.html
The Fed and the US Dollar
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/17/yellen-steams-ahead-with-fed-rate-rise-but-concerns-mount-on-dol/
US Dollar and Politics
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/upshot/the-glaring-contradiction-at-the-heart-of-donald-trumps-economic-policy.html
The Fed and the US Dollar
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/17/yellen-steams-ahead-with-fed-rate-rise-but-concerns-mount-on-dol/