Yesterday I promised to stay clear of analysing the US economy for a while given how much mis-information is flowing out of there. Today I break that promise to myself. Last week (July 7, 2011) the rabid US Republican Paul Ryan released a “House Budget Committee document” – The Debt Overhang and the U.S. Jobs Malaise – which drew on work produced by Stanford Professor John B. Taylor. You can sort of understand politicians who lie and embellish but when a text-book writing, senior economic professors misuses our art to misrepresent the situation you have to wonder. Whoever Mark Twain got that phrase “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” from they must have been reading Taylor’s blog in recent years.