I love the articles we are now seeing that the 2001 tax cut did not work. But look at what happened to real retail sales right after the 2001 tax rebates were implemented. The US experienced a very large surge in real retail sales that werenot adequately explained by the usual factors. ( see the […]

This article found on comcast.net from AP describes a growing problem. For as long as the United States has sent its young men – and later its young women – off to war, it has watched as a segment of them come home and lose the battle with their own memories, their own scars, and […]

I spent the weekend babysitting a grandchild. But I was reminded that at the end Goldilockswas run out of the forest by the three bears.

Treatment of PTSD 2008 is a comprehensive meta-analysis of studies done for the government on treatments for PTSD. I will have some follow through later this week. The 212 page document is one of the more throrough I have seen, so I mention this for any readers who have time and are curious. No surprises […]

“Servers, labourers, and workmen of different kinds make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor […]

The NYT has an article that offers some insight in Whitehouse thinking and wishes. On one side, according to people familiar with the deliberations, is a powerful group of pragmatists, including Henry M. Paulson Jr., the treasury secretary; Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; and Ed Gillespie, counselor to Mr. Bush. They […]

Fiscal stimulus? All sorts of numbers being tossed around, not sure where they are coming up with them from. But, if we are looking to drive a consumption based economy, it seems to me we have to get money into the hands of the most consumers on a regular basis. Here is what has to […]

The NYT reports that there is: Strong evidence is emerging that consumer spending, a bulwark against recession over the last year even as energy prices surged and the housing market sputtered, has begun to slow sharply at every level of the American economy, from the working class to the wealthy. The abrupt pullback raises the […]

Andrew Leonard at Salon takes the savvy and well educated, knowledgeable movers and shakers to task for their whining about free markets and oversight. It reminds me of: 1. Too big to fail, which may be true, but stay with the same management? 2. DolB can sell discounted flowers to all the readership using their […]

The New England Journal of Medicine reports this abstract about unreported clinical trials of pharmaceutical companies. Background Evidence-based medicine is valuable to the extent that the evidence base is complete and unbiased. Selective publication of clinical trials — and the outcomes within those trials — can lead to unrealistic estimates of drug effectiveness and alter […]