No, Xcel Energy does not make a lot of money from the “float” of interim increased customer payments it receives between the time it files for a large rate increase — as it did this week — and when the…
Author: Ed Lotterman
Too much hyperbole hurts our public debate
“Nothing succeeds like excess.” Oscar Wilde’s wry twist on an old motto is a good description of U.S. politics today. Unfortunately, what is in excess often is exaggeration and any success achieved is not for our society as a whole.…
Fed policymakers continue to avoid the inevitable
Boink? Clink? Thunk? There is no standard editorial cartoon caption for a can being kicked down the road. But whatever that sound might be, you could hear it Wednesday when the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee decided to stick with…
Fed’s ‘Dead Economists Society’ still quite alive
Economists may die, but their ideas can live on for decades or centuries. Sometimes a theory may seem dead, only to come back, like Lazarus. New Zealand economist A.W. (Bill) Phillips passed away in 1975, but his ideas live on…
Nobels illustrate change in theories
The three U.S. economists awarded the Nobel Memorial Medal in Economic Science last week have all done good work and deserve the honor. They were grouped together because they worked in the same general area of finance: how markets determine…
China has grand plans for its currency
Forty years ago, Treasury Secretary John Connally told U.S. allies: “The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” That high-handed attitude grated, but it was an accurate reflection of the economic dominance of the United States. Today, as U.S.…
Why no sweet deal for oil producers?
Why do we treat sugar differently than oil? In our nation we often follow radically different policies with regard to products that aren’t all that different from an economic perspective. Why we do so often isn’t clear, but these anomalies…
Senate should rise above politics and confirm Yellen
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously described President Roosevelt as having a “second class intellect but a first class temperament.” Historians do quibble over whether he was referring to Franklin or Teddy, but his insight that leadership qualities can be more…
Politics to blame for 1995 shutdown
Don’t fall for romantic fables about imagined fiscal successes. Former Sen. Daniel Moynihan once said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” But facts are often elusive, and Americans are notoriously weak on history.…
Be careful when comparing states’ economies
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this column contained a factual error. I stated that Indiana’s inflation-adjusted state gross domestic product grew at only a 1.9 percent annual rate last year as compared with 2011 levels. The correct rate is 3.3…