I am generally skeptical about the importance of further QE in the USA, but I am definitely not skeptical about the effectiveness of the the leaked European Central Bank plan to purchase unlimited amounts of European Government debt. The reason is that there are government bonds over here which terrify investors. That means that the […]
by Maggie Mahar (The author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper/Collins 2006), Mahar also served as the co-writer of the documentary, Money-Driven Medicine (2009), directed by Andrew Fredericks and produced by Alex Gibney.Before she began writing about health care, Mahar was a financial journalist and wrote for Barron’s, […]
Okay, more jargon. But important jargon because the policy proposals are starting from different baselines themselves defined by this jargon. So while some of the following is basic, it is equally a rhetorical (in the classical definition) baseline. Under current Social Security law future benefits are set by a formula. For a given individual this […]
by Linda Beale Romney and Private Equity’s Questionable Schemes for Paying Very Little Tax Presumably any American who wants to be informed is aware that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s claim to business acumen resides in his experience at a private equity firm that made much of its money by ramping up debt at purchased […]
Payroll Employment by Presidential Administrations Ryan is saying that Obama’s record is like Jimmy Carter’s record. When it comes to employment we should hope so. During Carter’s four years in office payroll employment expanded some 10 million,or 12.5%. or at an average annual rate of 3.1% This is the second best employment record ofany post […]
by Rebecca Wilder Policy transmission mechanism: Broken in Italy, better in SpainYesterday, the Financial Times reported that borrowing costs for small businesses in the periphery were rising relative to the core using the ECB’s release of July MFI interest rate data. I highlighted this point exactly on August 1 following Draghi’s now famous London speech, […]
Passing along a note from Michael Perelman at Econospeak: The Matrix: The Intersection of War, Economic Theory, and the Economy Vincent Portillo and I are working on a new book, The Matrix: The Intersection of War, Economic Theory, and the Economy. So far it is still remains an exploration rather than a finished research project. […]
I’m feeling lonely out on this limb, but I think I will defend Bernanke and criticize Woodford ((and admit I only read the concluding section and the first two sections on foreward guidance of his talk) *.pdf but no warning. Open it). Medium and long term Treasury rates are extraordinarily low. It seems to me that […]
I like Truthout. I’m on its email list and so I receive daily notices about newly posted articles on the site. I don’t read them all, but the ones I read usually are worth the time. And I was deeply flattered when, two years ago, on the basis of two lengthy articles I posted here […]
…if you read about the tussle between the two great economists, you are struck by two things. First, how pragmatic a man John Maynard Keynes was. And second, how utopian the ideals of Friedrich Hayek are. This is odd, as each man attached himself to a polar opposite political philosophy: Keynes’s ideas were adopted by […]