The WSJ Economics Blog, discussing June 2010 unemployment rates by state, uses the headline “Most Regions Show Improvement“* I suppose we should be encouraged by the headline and not look at the text: Washington, DC and 16 states recorded jobless rates in excess of 10%. North and South Dakota continued to have the lowest rates […]

Tom aka Rusty RustbeltHEALTH CARE – PUBLIC POLICY DILEMMA Fifty years ago much mental illness treatment was done in-patient in state run facilities, and many of them were hellholes (One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was probably too positive compared to what I saw early in my career). The de-institutional movement (starting in the late […]

By Daniel Becker An ad I’ve been seeing recently aired by BP is promoting how much work they are doing to clean up the oil spill. It is designed to leave you feeling comforted that they are on top of it, they are cleaning it up in a massive effort. Say, 29 million gallons of […]

Hat tip Calculated Risk: The WSJ reports Senate Set to Extend Jobless Benefits. This is an extension of the qualification dates for existing tiers of extended unemployment benefits, not additional weeks of benefits.

by Dale Coberly “SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY OPTIONS” JULY 2010 A USER FRIENDLY GLOSS ON THE CBO REPORT The first thing that strikes me about the CBO report is that the language is unnecessarily negative. They tell you that Social Security is running out of money. They tell you this three times in three ways. They […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter Goldman’s Settlement with the SEC On July 15, it was announced that Goldman had reached a settlement of the SEC’s charges regarding material misrepresentations in an Abacus CDO deal, acknowledging that its materials were “incomplete”. See Chan & Story, Goldman Pays $550 Million to Settle Fraud Case, NY Times (July […]

by Mike KImelCross-posted at the Presimetrics blog. CountryWide goes Kafka – a First Person Narrative This post is going to be a bit different, at least for me. Generally I like to write things that are more data oriented, and that involve some pictures and figures. But this is a little story that happened to […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter Overpaying CEOs The Wall Street Journal reports today on a study by three academics on CEO pay. They are Streedhari Desai (Harvard), Jennifer George (Rice) and Arthur Brief (Utah), and their study is “When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations” (available on SSRN). Here’s the abstract: The topic of […]

Mark Thoma posted yesterday Is Galbraith Right that Deficits are Never a Problem? on Paul Krugman’s NYT piece I Would Do Anything For Stimulus, But I Won’t Do That (Wonkish) on MMT and soveriegn debt (using Angry Bear’s posting of Jamie Galbraith’s testimony to Congress as a link), and has included Jamie Galbraith’s response. It […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter tax extenders legislation As most everyone knows, the Bush tax cuts were passed as temporary measures, with a provision sunsetting the cuts at the end of 2010. Back when the GOP controlled Congress passed the series of Bush tax cuts, they knew that they were creating a whopping deficit but […]