I have been reading David Romer’s class notes called Short-run fluctuations. Part of his paper deals with a model to explain inflation in a liquidity trap. The model is based on real interest rates, output, expected inflation, Keynesian cross and IS-MP model stuff. He writes… “An economy where the nominal interest rate is zero poses […]

Mr. Obama also singled out sponsors of a “cynical ad campaign” discouraging Americans from signing up for the new health care program by arguing that it would effectively put the government into the room when women undergo gynecological exams and men undergo colonoscopies. “These are billionaires several times over,” Mr. Obama said, evidently referring to […]

In the past I have written about how government tax credits will help young adults (18-34) who must buy their own coverage because they don’t have access to “affordable, comprehensive” employer-sponsored coverage. But older Americans forced to purchase their own insurance will save even more. Precisely because a 50-year-old’s premiums may be three times higher […]

An issue arose in the comments at a previous post, Labor share is chopped liver to Mr. Krugman. The issue is whether increasing employment in order to increase wages and labor share is a good strategy for fiscal and monetary policy. Dean Baker, Paul Krugman and others put forth this strategy. It seems common understanding […]

Jon Chait argues that the SNAP cuts passed by the House are horrible and unlike the 1996 welfare reform. Is the “work requirement” they plan to impose on food stamps like welfare reform? There are three highly salient differences. Welfare benefits were specifically designed in a way, dating from their origin as a replacement for […]

Greg Mankiw reviews a paper written trying to support minimum wages. Mr. Mankiw is not in favor of minimum wages and was not sold by the paper. The best paper that I know of on minimum wages was written by Bruce Kaufman. His paper was titled, Institutional Economics and the Minimum Wage: Broadening the Theoretical […]

When someone is not being noticed, there’s the saying, “What am I? Chopped liver?” There is something that Paul Krugman is simply not noticing. First, let me quote Mr. Krugman from his recent post, The Depressed Economy is all about Austerity. “I don’t want to pretend to spurious precision here. Instead, I just want to […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Obamacare Updates Latest news on Obamacare: Narrow Networks – Some customers of the new insurance exchanges may be surprised at the “narrow network” included in their insurance coverage. Narrow networks have a limited list of approved provider and will likely make out-of-network treatment difficult if not impossible. This […]

I remember how much time it took to evolve a notion of the range of ‘appropriate’ comments and how difficult it was, excluding the easy ones to eliminate that were simply rude and crude.  There were lots of considerations for Angry Bear that are different than the magazine faced I am sure, but the struggle […]