Robert Waldmann finds himself more than usually ignorant about a topic which interests him (hard as that is to believe). Medicare has a budget shortfall of present value of a whole whole lotta dough. This tends to make people worry, and makes many believe that benefits will be cut by the health care reform bills. […]

By Spencer The employment report was discouraging. In contrast to last month when the leading indicators of employment appeared to be stabilizing,they resumed their downtrend this month. Most importantly, hours worked fell o.3% from an upward revised 99.2 to 98.9. the best that can be said about this now is that the rate of decline […]

Rebecca Let’s investigate these pre-BLS reports. There are many job reports out there, but here are some of the biggies that come out right before the official government BLS employment situation (not a coincidence). Monster Employment Index (not seasonally adjusted) – an index geared toward online recruiting trends. Challenger job cuts (not seasonally adjusted) – […]

by divorced one like Bush So I’ve been thinking: What, since the passage of Medicare has the federal government implemented that actually reduced the risk of living for the US citizen? No, tax cuts do not count. They do not reduce risk. We have reduced risk for business all over the place. NAFTA, CAFTA, exemption […]

by Bruce Webb DC and the blogosphere are all over the resurrection of the Public Option Trigger, the idea that with the right legislation the insurance companies would just straighten up and fly right. Most of the Left is pretty cynical about the idea and rightly so given the insurance companies several decade pattern on […]

Robert Waldmann An article with that title by Steve Silverman in Wired is getting a lot of attention. I actually know a little bit about the placebo effect and depression. Lo and behold, Silverman’s key example is the effect of placebos on depression. He briefly mentions two issues which I would like to discuss at […]

Robert Waldmann Or are they crazy like foxes ? I think Ezra Klein is being played. At least I sure hope he’s being played. Klein is in contact with the White House. Unsurprisingly, he reports that there is a bitter debate over health care reform inside the Obama administration. There are clear hints of this […]

by Bruce Webb Both sides of the Health Care debate are looking and or calculating at the effects on future elections, will including a public option play in Peoria? This I think is to misunderstand the timelines because for most people the initial passage of reform really doesn’t change anything for the next two election […]

Rebecca Wilder With the developed and developing economies printing money like it’s going out of style, the exit strategy – i.e., taking back the hundred percent increase in the monetary base (at least in the US) – is rumored to be the topic du jour at the G-20 summit later this month. According to Reuters, […]

by cactus As I understand it, the Libertarian position is that for the most part, if an entity (a person, a company, or a corporation) wants to do something with property it owns, it should generally be allowed to do so. I don’t want to be arguing with a strawman, so if I have an […]