Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Guest Post: Latest from Cato…

Guest post by Michael Halasy Latest from Cato… Kaiser Health News carries an article from Michael Cannon from Cato Institute on the benefits of Ryan’s proposal on Medicare. Cannon is wrong. First, he begins by advocating for repeal by comparing the roughly 500 billion in cost of the program to the overall debt and deficit, […]

Social Security & the Debt Limit

{Crossposted from dKos Social Security Defenders Group} Social Security has been off the radar this week for obvious reasons, progressives being more focused on efforts of Republicans to win the War on Women via the Continuing Resolution. Plus while Paul Ryan’s original Roadmap proposed privatization of Social Security his Budget proposal for next year left […]

ECB policy is tightening – has been for some time

Update: Nouriel Roubini front pages this post on Euromonitor here. The ECB dove in and hiked its policy rate by 25 basis points to 1.25%. I had the pleasure of listening to Wolfgang Munchau on Thursday, and he reiterated what I reluctantly understood: the ECB’s strict inflation target is ridiculously simple for such a complex […]

Don’t savings lower the deficit?

AP’s Andrew Taylor describes a part of the federal budget debate that needs clarification for the average voter and others regarding this current round of ‘negotiations’: Some $18 billion of the spending cuts involve cuts to so-called mandatory programs whose budgets run largely on autopilot. To the dismay of budget purists, these cuts often involve […]

Tax credits are not Government Spending?

The Tax Policy Center The Supreme Court Says Tax Expenditures aren’t Goverbment Spending points us to a notable decision by the Supreme Court that has been lost in the federal budget fracas. Ever since Stanley Surrey popularized the concept of tax expenditures nearly half a century back, economists have argued that many tax breaks are […]

Guest post: Regional Disparities in Health Spending in Medicare

by Michael Halasy Health Policy Analyst and Emergency Medicine PA Regional Disparities in Health Spending… Jason Shafrin, over at the Healthcare Economist, brings up an interesting paper examining the data from the Dartmouth Atlas. For those that are unfamiliar, the Dartmouth Atlas is a compendium of data examining Medicare spending per beneficiary, and then comparing […]

I Wonder What John Yoo Thinks of All This

by Beverly Mann I Wonder What John Yoo Thinks of All This Most of you, I’m sure, know of the controversy concerning Freedom of Information requests by Wisconsin Republican officials to University of Wisconsin professor history and environmental studies professor William Cronon, in retaliation for certain postings on his new blog and for a New […]