In light of some of the comments to my post yesterday arguing that that the real reason that healthcare insurance companies are now madly encouraging Obamacare enrollment is fear of a pro-public-option or pro-single-payer political juggernaut, I want to make clear that by single-payer I do not mean Medicare-for-all. Single-payer would be, in essence, “the […]
An article came out in the WSJ web site called Lenders Look to Fed Tapering to Lift Business Borrowing. One would think that tapering would discourage borrowing. Yet, we are in a situation where long-term low interest rates suppress borrowing. Here is the key line from the article referring to tapering… “Such a move would […]
The post is too good to excerpt so just go read it. To edit ruthlessly 1. The business cycle is not symmetric. [skip] 2. As much as the NBER methodology emphasizes the notion of recessions (which, by the way, is asymmetric in nature), most academic research is produced around models where small and frequent shocks […]
From the Economic Populist: The Latest Never Ending Adventures in Corporatism Via the TPP – Wikileaks has published more secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement documents, revealing more and more how the United States represents large corporations and not the citizens of the nation. The Huffington Post published a large front page story is on the Trans-Pacific […]
I’ve expected this for some time, and here it is: The Wall Street Journal reports that insurance companies are set to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to entice potential customers on to the exchanges created by Obamacare. As the Journal puts it: Insurers … are capitalizing on an unprecedented opportunity in a […]
The future of monetary policy is troubling. I present a video to explain. (Part 4 of a series on the journey of the Fed rate from 1978 to the present.) Since the 1960’s, the Fed rate has consistently reacted to the natural level of real GDP (in terms of labor and capital utilization). Effective demand […]
I can’t resist commenting on the discussion between Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong on the young Stanley Fischer (part of the problem is I can’t get the equitablog comment system to work). The one minute summary is that Brad discussed the history of thought and noted that way back when new Keynesian macro was new, […]
What does or would it mean to say that Social Security was ‘solvent’? Under the rules that govern the Trustees of Social Security the test for any given year is pretty simple: did or will the year end with all obligations/cost met while still retaining assets equal to the next year’s cost. To determine this […]
Emerging Strategy for the DEMS; Karoli at Crooks and Liars, Dems Strategy on Extending Unemployment Insurance Dems will leverage their votes to pass the Farm Bill for an extension of Unemployment . “Now that Congress is set to leave town even as unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans are set to expire just after Christmas, […]
I normally don’t post here about high-profile news stories on which I have nothing, really, to add to what has been reported extensively in news stories or argued in opinion pieces in the mainstream media. So my first inclination when I saw an email from Dan Crawford yesterday suggesting that I post on the affluenza […]