This week was all about President Barack Obama’s new budget, the continuing rise in the markets and also murmurs of a Bitcoin bubble.
“This budget is dead on arrival,” Bloomberg Government’s Nela Richardson said. And the chained CPI, which is a new way of calculating inflation that tells us how much our Social Security benefits are going to increase every year by allowing for substitution between goods, “would actually reduce benefits a bit. And it would be a step in entitlement reform, but not a very popular one, especially for seniors and Democrats…It’s being used to be a compromise but it’s not really going to work.”
“I think Obama was trying to show that ‘Look, I’m going to do this — I’m going to do the thing that makes my guys really angry; I’m going to minorly tweak Social Security so the benefit payments are a little lower,'” said John Carney of CNBC. “I think he was showing that he was really willing to make a change here, and I think the Republicans, almost irresponsibly, have completely shunned this thing.”
Listen to the full audio above for more on the Bitcoin bubble and bank earnings on the Weekly Wrap.
#Longreads for your weekend
As always, our Weekly Wrappers provide their #longreads picks for the weekend.
Nela Richardson chose:
- As a mommy who works outside the home, this New York Times article is near and dear to my heart. It explains why having it all ain’t cheap and how are tax code penalizes dual-income couples.
- On the heels of the final NCAA basketball tournament, this clever piece from Bgov tax economist Patrick Driessen shows how the federal government through the tax code affects the games.
- Things You Should Never Do For Your Kids — the article says you should never a) do their homework; b) speak for them (let kids speak for themselves when spoken to); and c) pick their friends.
John Carney picked:
- The Pension Fund That Ate California: on CalPERS’s corruption and insider trading.
- A Vanderbilt study shows that women who graduate from elite universities are working much fewer hours than women who graduated from less selective schools.
- The New York Times Dealbook looks at how instead of relief, banks are shifting risky assets to other institution.
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