Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Challenges of the Greek Crisis

by Joseph Joyce The Challenges of the Greek Crisis The Greek crisis has abated, but not ended. Representatives of the “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund returned to Athens for talks with the Greek government about a new bailout. This pause allows an accounting of the many […]

Social Security Defender Archive: Including Northwest Plan Docs/Spreadsheets

I have been working off and on, well mostly off because of ‘life’ and ‘laziness’, since 2010 on a project I modestly called the Social Security Defender. It is all built around a Google account and so has a Google+ page, a blog, an e-mail address and a Google Drive. Today I am going live […]

Is trade zero-sum between workers in different countries?

Vox.com had a long, interesting interview with Senator Bernie Sanders covering a large number of political and economic issues. In this post, I want to focus on just one issue he raised: Whether rising incomes for Chinese workers have to come at the expense of U.S. workers. Here is what Sanders told Vox’s Ezra Klein: […]

Dean Baker on the 2015 SocSec Report and Real Wage

CEPR’s Dean Baker: Wage Growth Continues to be the Key to Social Security Solvency Dean Baker and colleague Mark Weisbrot have been making a steady case since their publication of the aptly named Social Security: the Phony Crisis back in 1999. In short Social Security does not face a structural demographic problem, instead it has […]

Shopping Around . . .

Quite a few blogging PPACA naysayers are out there advertising the 25 to 50% increases in premiums for healthcare plans under the PPACA. Charles Gaba@ACA Signups blog points out it is just an opportunity to “shop around” and the premium increases may not be big anyway in dollars and cents. “Looking past the scary headlines” […]

Is Jeremy Corbyn the Bernie Sanders of Britain?

Who is Jeremy Corbyn? Well it turns out that the British Labour Party is two weeks out from a leadership election after their shellacking in the last election. And the contest very much mirrors that of Sanders vs Clinton, with Corbyn representing Old Labour (Democratic Socialism) and the other candidates represent New Labour (Blairite Neo-Liberalism). […]