by Rebecca Wilder Euro Area GDP Report: Not Pretty Today Eurostat released the second estimate of Q4 2011 Gross Domestic Product. Real Euro area (EA) GDP declined 0.3% over the quarter (-1.3% on an annualized basis). In this release Eurostat provides a breakdown across region, spending categories, and industry, and is much more detailed than […]
by Linda Beale Greg Mankiw attempting to justify carried interest Greg Mankiw wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times Money section: Capital Gains, Ordinary Income and Shades of Gray, New York Times (Mar. 4, 2012). Mankiw notes the historical trend in the US to differentiate between capital gains and ordinary income regarding tax rates (though […]
My last post prompted me to revisit one from last May that I thought Bears might appreciate. For your delectation: Conservatives love to point out that our employer-based health insurance system is a result of wage controls under FDR. Since employers weren’t able to attract workers with higher wages, they started offering benefits instead — notably […]
Or: You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up “Health Care Costs Put U.S. at Significant Disadvantage Compared with Global Competitors” I’ll let you read the details, but short story: Whodathunkit? And what do they recommend? Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information […]
Eminent New Keynesian Economist Susanto Basu commented on a post challenging people to come up with an empirically useful idea in macroeconomics not to be found in “The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.” Here I will just note again how incredibly polite New Keynesians tend to be. bold numbers added for future reference […]
Or: Even a Stopped Clock is Right, Eventually For quite a while I’ve been explaining the rabid, frantic vehemence of tea partiers and Republicans in general with a single visualization: They’ve got their backs against the seawall, and a massive, overwhelming demographic tidal wave is looming over them. The terror that situation provokes among old, […]
Jon Hammond from econographia reseached the topic of contraceptive pills on the cost aspects involved with health insurance at my request. Instead of losing real data in the comments sections on previous posts, I am posting his findings here: Here are some of the empirical findings dealing with the insurance costs and cost-savings of coverage […]
Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario writes in Making the United States More Like Greece: One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data. Various people assisted in the matter – including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues – but […]
by Rebecca WilderEuropean Daily Catch: Retail Sales Stabilizing? Today’s real retail sales gave the ECB and EU heads of state another reason to keep their fingers crossed for stability of the Euro area economy (.pdf of release). In January, volume adjusted retail sales increased 0.3% in the Euro area (EA) and broke a 4-month trend […]
Seriously. In the rambling press release that he self-styled an apology to Georgetown U. law student Sandra Fluke for calling her a slut and a prostitute, Limbaugh groused: Amazingly, when there is the slightest bit of opposition to this new welfare entitlement being created, then all of a sudden we hate women. He then explained […]