by cactus I’ve had a few posts on healthcare in the past, such as looking at how costs increased across various presidential administrations to my own run-ins with insurance companies. So I was kind of interested in this piece on healthcare on the WSJ by Karl Rove. Let me pick a few passages and comment… […]

Another dual-bankruptcy female with real estate problems. Wonder what the difference will be?

rdan This chart from Calculated Risk shows the surplus and deficit as a per centage of GDP since 1960. Howard Rich mentioned in his post that the deficit was a function of “the leak in demand of the American economy.” Juan reminds us that China is not a passive player to our ‘demand’ pull’. Juan […]

rdan I will put up two open threads for a little while to see what happens since I am averse to censoring. The first is Open thread with GW, the other Open thread w/out GW. The latter could be about economics of some kind. This is the one without, since we put up the other […]

rdan Re-posted with permission from the author. Trade deficits resume upward climbHoward Richman The US trade statistics for April were just reported yesterday. The US trade deficits, overall, went up for the second month in a row, despite a continuing decline in both imports and exports. The largest component of our trade deficits continues to […]

Robert Waldmann Will Wilkinson* demonstrates his absolute inability to understand the concept of “opportunity cost” and complete lack of common sense after the jump. * update: spelling Kirrected. Cash for Clunkersby Will Wilkinson on June 10, 2009 OK. Let me get this straight. I can get $4500 toward a new car as long as my […]

This is my last hogging post of the season. Congratulations to Bill Guerin and the rest of the Pens.

by Prof Neil Buchanan of GWU Just read the whole thing.The 2009 Social Security Trustees’ Report: Good News Behind the Headlines I could not agree more with Prof. Buchanan’s conclusion. While there is some talk of returning to address Social Security’s finances after we fix healthcare costs, it at least appears likely that we will […]

Robert Waldmann Tilman Tacke and I wrote this manuscript looking at income inequality and infant mortality (I’ve discussed it here before). I am going to indulge myself describing the paper I wanted to write but couldn’t because the data didn’t cooperate (gave essentially no empirical support for my pet theory). After the jump, my pet […]