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

Not Scarcity, But Surplus is the Problem

Not Scarcity, But Surplus is the Problem (Just as Dismal, though) by Noni Mausa, lifted from comments at Economist’s View They were discussing scarcity last week at Economist’s View. But to my mind scarcity isn’t our core problem. I wrote (and then edited a bit for this post): ======= Yes, scarcity of resources is fundamental […]

Small Business=Fraud, Countercyclical Planning, MMT, and Other Economics Catch-up

Note:This was going to be short pieces about things I missed during a week of illness. It turned into a Very Long Piece riffing on two posts from Capital Gains and Games. And that’s without even mentioning the bravura work Stan Collender is doing there: see, for instance, this note that a deficit reduction bill […]

Health Care Thoughts: Draft Exchange Rules Published

Health Care Thoughts: Draft Exchange Rules Published The Obama administration has published draft rules for the formation and operation of Affordable Insurance Exchanges, a key element in the PPACA (Obamacare) plan to increase insurance coverage. There is a 75 day comment and then more time to digest the comments before final rules are issued. Implementation […]

Texas, the jobs engine? Or Texas, the jobs-laundering engine?

by Beverly Mann Update: Business journalist Merrill Goozner has a terrific in-depth deconstruction of the so-called Texas Miracle at TheFiscalTimes, at Perry’s Texas Miracle less than meets the eye, published last Friday. Texas, the jobs engine? Or Texas, the jobs-laundering engine? An op-ed piece mentioned by a reader two weekends ago in the LA Times, […]

Once more: I WANT MORE SPENDING!

by: Daniel Becker Ok some more information to bolster my position that my flower shop being down this year another 4.5% compared to last year (at least the decline is leveling off) is not the results of government debt or too much taxation or banks not lending or unions… nope, my shop is off because […]

GDP Gap versus S&P 500 EPS

Over at Economist’ View he has posted a nice set of charts on the GDP Gap, employment versus the long term trend and other measures of how much excess capacity the economy has that have become very popular among economists over the last couple of years. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ But these charts never include profits in their […]

A Post: Tax Burdens, Presidents, and Subsequent Economic Growth – A Few Pictures, Part

by Mike Kimel A Post: Tax Burdens, Presidents, and Subsequent Economic Growth – A Few Pictures, Part 1 Last week I had a post looking at the relationship between the change in the tax burden in the first two years of a Presidential administration and the growth of real GDP during the remaining years of […]