by cactus How much are all those folks at the various TARP corporate welfare recipients worth? We’re being deluged with stories about how many executives at such institutions are leaving because the big bad gubmint is limiting their pay, and how that’s going to hurt us in the long run. Worse, we’re told that this […]

by Rebecca Policymakers across Latin America are announcing measures to stem currency appreciation against the $US. Since March 2009, the $US depreciated 25% against the Colombian peso, 28% against the Brazilian real, 14% against the Mexican peso, 12% against the Peruvian nuevo sol, and 11% against the Chilean peso. Much of the $US’s lost value […]

Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt The Newest “Hot Thing” As promised, after an eight day swing of health care conferences (speaking and listening) I am back in action. So what is the new hot thing among providers? Integrated Delivery Systems (IDS) This is hot, but not really new. IDS became hot in the 90s when it […]

Bruce Bartlett posts a note that could have come from me (but, for reasons that will become obvious, did not: During the 8 Reagan years, when marginal [tax] rates were sharply cut (but deficits were substantial), equities on the NYSE and the S & P 500 about doubled. During the 4 Bush 41 years, when […]

Ken Houghton, having realized there is still a Commercial Paper market, looks at one implication of it. One of the things that gets ignored in all the fussing about government debt is how small it is by comparison to corporate debt. The shortest-term debt, Commercial Paper, can be very interesting. With a maturity that is […]

Dr. Black starts digging into the question why so many Georgia-based banks fail. The picture painted isn’t pretty: The review also contains a photo of a planned 238 townhouse project that the bank financed for $5.6 million in 2007 even as the real estate market was softening. By September 2008 about three quarters of the […]

Wired offers pictures of tricked out electric vehicles. Muscle car readers age 80 86 years old! You know who you are.

rdan Reader donald sent this note for consideration: Sunday night while slogging back up to Burlington from Hartford, CT (460 miles round trip as it turns out) we were listening to NPR. I didn’t think to make a note of what show, but it was discussing health care and brought up a point I wasn’t […]

rdan This American Psychological Association study is a follow up to Robert’s Wobegone economics post. Taken from comments by reader rd. The abstract is quoted: People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled […]