by Calculated Risk on 12/13/2012 08:27:00 PM

A couple of articles for light evening reading:

From Derek Thompson at the Atlantic: The Best Idea for the Debt Ceiling? Abolish It Forever. It really should be called the "default ceiling". I've been arguing for years - since Reagan demanded a clean bill from Congress in the '80s - that the default ceiling is just for political grandstanding.

From Suzy Khimm at the Wonkblog: New language, same findings: Tax hikes on the rich won’t cripple the economy. Here is the updated Congressional Research Service report. The data speaks.

Note: I still expect some sort of compromise to be reached on the "fiscal cliff", probably in early January.

Thursday economic releases:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the Consumer Price Index for November will be released. The consensus is for CPI to decrease 0.2% in November and for core CPI to increase 0.2%.

• At 9:15 AM, the Fed will release Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization for November. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in Industrial Production in November, and for Capacity Utilization to increase to 78.0%.



Another question for the December economic prediction contest (Note: You can now use Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID to log in).