The New York Times carries a negative review of a book, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, written by a Times contributor, William Cohan. The review makes reference to "the damage inflicted by the Great Recession (though not to Goldman Sachs)." Does the Times or the reviewer really believe that the "Great Recession" inflicted no damage to Goldman Sachs? The firm's stock now trades at about $161 a share, down from a high of about $235 a share in October 2007, and representing a loss of about $40 billion in market capitalization.

James Surowiecki, writing in the New Yorker, has a piece about gasoline prices: "Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke, has even argued that the way we buy gasoline—standing at the pump and watching the dollars pile up—is inherently disheartening." The New Yorker Web site doesn't have hyperlinks, but a Web search via Google (use it while you can, before the government wrecks it) turns up this piece in which Mr. Ariely observes, "you stand next to the pump, you fill it up, there's nothing else to do and you're watching these number go up."

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial over the weekend headlined "The Internet Tax Mirage" that took on the question of how, and whether, states should apply sales and use tax to items purchased over the Internet. The Journal writes, "The courts should insure that a firm has a genuine physical presence in the state—not merely an online presence—to impose its taxing power. States retain the right to collect a 'use tax' from their residents who make purchases from out-of-state companies or over the Internet."

Today's Wall Street Journal in its Greater New York section publishes an article headlined "Time Warner Eyes Headquarters Move," about the possibility that Time Warner would leave its Columbus Circle headquarters for a site at Hudson Yards, which is also on Manhattan's West Side: "Still, the rail yards have inducements, including tax abatements."

Meanwhile, over in the Marketplace section of the same paper is another article, headlined, "Time Warner CEO Pay Rises to $26.3 Million."

What better way for the New Yorkers who earn less than $26.3 million a year to treat a guy who earns $26.3 million a year than to pay him, using their tax dollars, to move his company from one part of Manhattan's West Side to another part of Manhattan's West Side? Why should Forbes and Newsweek employees have their taxes taken from them to give "tax abatements" to their competitors at Time Warner-owned Fortune and Time?

From a Politico article about whether the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission will take the lead in antitrust enforcement against Google: "Now Google is seen as a potentially history-making case — the kind that lawyers at both agencies would love to work on."

This is pretty good insight into how the personal agenda of regulators affects what regulatory agencies do. It's not a "history-making case" if the lawyers decide that Google isn't doing anything wrong and take no action against the company. That won't get their name in the newspapers. And it's unlikely that someone who personally believes that the market eventually takes care of antitrust enforcement on its own would choose to go to work for the government as an antitrust lawyer, unless the person is doing so as a stop before heading through the revolving door to more lucrative employment in the private sector.

Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser, whose book Triumph of the City we reviewed here earlier, has a new working paper out from the National Bureau of Economic Research. It is co-authored by Giacomo Ponzetto and Kristina Tobio and was partially funded by the government of Spain. It's full of interesting stuff, but what struck me as the most immediately newsworthy part was this: "while the recession impacted on all of America, it did not hit every place equally. In February 2010, the unemployment rate was over 20 percent in Merced, California, and over 15 percent in Detroit, Michigan. At the same time, the unemployment rate in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was 7.7 percent and in Boulder, Colorado, only 6.5 percent."

Arnold Kling: "Somehow, we could ratchet up spending by hundreds of billions at the drop of a hat. Reducing spending by less than $100 billion becomes Armageddon."

Link via Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek, which also has some good charts and some interesting comments, including one likening the spending increase to a fish hook that is hard to remove once the fish is caught.

Major League Baseball plays a long season, and the Red Sox may yet turn it around after losing seven games and winning just one in their first eight. But at the moment. it's not looking so good for the "experts." Sports Illustrated predicted the Red Sox would win 100 games and win the World Series. At ESPN, 33 of its 45 pundits predicted the Red Sox would win the World Series.

If it's this hard to predict baseball, imagine how hard it is to forecast developments in other complex systems. The Federal Reserve tries to fine-tune the performance of the nation's economy through monetary policy. Climatologists try to forecast how warm it will be 50 or 100 years from now and what that will do to sea levels. Predictions in complex systems are hard. That doesn't mean they should never be attempted or acted upon, just that they should be treated with the skepticism they deserve.

The manager of the Congressional Effect Fund, Eric Singer, talks to theStreet.com about a government shutdown: "On balance, the government shutdown is probably a plus for the market. If the government does shut down, the market will view it as a first indication that the United States will begin to seriously think about what is the appropriate size of government."

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, a Republican, have introduced the Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2011.

According to their summary, "For individuals: Wyden-Coats reduces the number of individual tax brackets from the current six to three: 15 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent and eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax completely....Wyden-Coats also makes American companies more competitive by reducing the top corporate tax rate and replacing the existing six corporate rates and eight brackets with a single flat rate of 24 percent."

That 24% corporate rate is a percentage point lower than the 25% that Republican Paul Ryan is proposing in his "Path to Prosperity."

The Wall Street Journal has a news article about the fact that the legislation would eliminate the federal tax exemption for municipal bond interest and replace it with a tax credit of 25% of the interest earned.

The New York Times's David Brooks takes on Paul Ryan:

Substantively, it does not address the structural problems plaguing the American economy: wage stagnation, inequality, declining growth rates.

Mr. Brooks doesn't think cutting the corporate and individual top federal tax rates to 25% and getting the federal budget under some control would help growth rates?

More:

Ryan would cut Pell grants back to their 2008 levels. This is not the horrendous monstrosity some liberals are screaming about. But the economic challenge from China and India demands that we spend more on Pell grants, scientific research, early childhood education and other investments in human capital than Ryan proposes.

Over at Reason.com, Matt Welch has some interesting thoughts about both Andrew Cuomo — "a progressive Democrat who's broke" and is stuck in a state with not enough Republicans to blame — and the possibility of a looming government shutdown — "distilling the Continuing Crisis into a single game of televised chicken gives unearned advantage to the guy who was already losing. Nothing improves long odds like challenging your opponent to a duel."

The Census Bureau just released a new report titled "Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Fluctuations in the U.S. Income Distribution, 2004-2007." It's what they call in the trade a longitudinal study, which captures changes for the same individuals over a period of time. Highlights: "Approximately 12.3 million U.S. households (11.5 percent) experienced changes in their annual income between 2004 and 2007 that resulted in their moving either up or down two or more quintiles in the income distribution....Of these 12.3 million households, 5.0 million households that started in the top and fourth quintiles experienced a decline of two or more quintiles between 2004 and 2007."

The household income quintile breaks for 2007 were at $21,648 (below is the bottom quintile); $39,246, $60,576 (between $39,000 and $60,000 is the middle quintile), and $92,899 (everything above that is the top quintile.) There's a certain bluntness to these categories – someone whose income rose to to $22,000 a year from $20,000 jumps up a quintile, while someone whose income falls to $93,000 from $1 million stays in the same quintile.

Under the authoritative-sounding headline: "FACT CHECK: Are Federal Workers Overpaid?," the Associated Press runs out the following dispatch from Washington:

Are federal employees overpaid?

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending.

Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts.

A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.

As support for its claim that "supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality," the Associated Press offers this:

Columbia president Lee Bollinger's $1,753,984-a-year compensation has been a topic here. A professor of economics at Ohio University, Richard Vedder, writes at the Manhattan Institute's "Minding the Campus" blog:

Some University presidents grumble that their football coach makes far more than they do. Yet those same college presidents have a prestigious job, often garner a couple hundred thousand dollars annually or so on the side in corporate director fees, and earn typically three times or so the income of the governor of the state that provides them their beneficence. And, unlike the football coach, it is seldom obvious when they have a bad year and, even if they did, they are seldom fired (unlike football coaches).