By Spencer Not only was the employment report disappointing, but previously reported encouraging leading indicators of employment were revised away. Most importantly, hours worked fell 0.5% from 99.0 to 98.5. We are now looking at a 3.0% drop in hours worked in the third quarter as compared to 7.8%,8.9% and 7.4% in the prior three […]

by Linda Beale Linda Beale writes at ataxingmatter: Health Care Reform or a boondoggle for private insurers? The Baucus proposal for health care “reform” doesn’t include a public option. And the Senate Finance Committee voted this afternoon-by 15 to 8–to reject the Rockefeller proposal to add a public option “community choice health plan’. See Hershenson, […]

Robert Waldmann Angry Bear September 04 2009 Tell reluctant senators and representatives that, if they think their constituents don’t want any public insurance except for medicare and medicaid, then they can refuse to have it. Ezra Klein and Senator Maria Cantwell October 1 2009 EK Can they opt out? MC States can opt out. Senator […]

Robert Waldmann A proposed reform (already shelved) is to require banks to offer “plain vanilla” products. I am very confused about this proposal, so this is a semi bleg. I can’t see any possible benefit from the regulation (probably because I haven’t read the fine print of the draft bill). My thoughts after the jump. […]

rdan The PEW economic policy department task force report suggests we take a better look at other models of regulation, perhaps to Australia. In this short paper we look at the structure of international financial regulation in teh context of their response to the crisis in order to see what lessons there may be for […]

rdan Seeking Alpha’s Matthew Goldstein notes that the OCC is continuing the last decade of regulatory non-action. The OCC, in its quarterly derivatives report, routinely notes that the Big Four “have the resources needed to be able to operate this business in a safe and sound manner.” In other words, the biggest banks are best […]