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Robert Waldmann David Altig has convinced the Wall Street Journal that hiring in the USA is low given the vacancy rate. The basic fact is “Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires,” I remain totally unconvinced. I’m not convinced by […]
We’re used to that line by now. Ross Perot—one of the more prominent people who got rich due to government contracts—used it, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are using it (while desperately hoping you don’t pay attention to how they ran Lucent/HP or eBay), and Aaron Sorkin even had Charles Grodin say it in Dave, […]
by Bruce Webb If I had to pick out the two biggest sources of confusion about Social Security finance it would have to be one, the relation of the Trust Funds to Public Debt and two, the relation of Social Security surplus/deficits to Budget Scoring. At Angry Bear we have discussed the equation Debt Held […]
by Linda Beale crossposted with Ataxingmatter More on UBS and Secret Banking Jurisdictions: Birkenfeld Tells All to Global Post Bradley Birkenfeld, the UBS banker who opened the floodgates of information on the bank’s nefarious practices of aiding and abetting tax evasion, is currently in prison. But he has also done a tell-all interview with the […]
Projected growth in spending on the federal government’s big health and retirement programs–Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security–dominates the long-run budget outlook. If current policies continue, that spending is likely to grow significantly faster than the economy as a whole over the next few decades. By 2040, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects those outlays will […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt HEALTH CARE: The Durable Medical Equipment (DME) mess So you go to an orthopedic surgeon with a complaint of back pain, and the surgeon orders a lumbar back brace for support. Can you stop at a counter and buy the brace on the way out the door? Probably not. Years […]
by Bruce Webb Exactly a month ago I put up a post If a Social Security Annual Report Vanishes into the Forest noting that not only was the Report months overdue but that nobody seemed to notice or care that there was no official announcement about the reasons for the delay or a new release […]
The employment report appears to confirm that the economy has slipped into a stagnation scenario as both payroll and the household survey reported that employment fell. The drop in employment stemmed largely from the layoffs of census workers as private sector employment rose some 71,000 as compared to 31,000 last month.Compared to the historic norm […]