Question:  How does fraud in the food stamps program compare with fraud in the crop insurance program?  

by Joseph P. Joyce (is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs ) Guest post:  Shake, Rattle and Roll The selloff last week of the currencies of many emerging market countries while stock prices also declined can be seen as the result of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” How […]

Via Joan McCarter, we learn that Wellpoint, which runs a number of for-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance plans, reported on an investor’s conference call that it expects to add over one million new policyholders this year and that its enrollments are much better than expectations. Of 500,000 enrolled so far, fully 80% of them came […]

I started blogging last March. Since then, one of my most visited posts presented a model to show the progressive death of the Fed rate. Basically, the effective zone of the Fed rate is being pushed lower and lower as effective demand declines due to the decline in labor share. In the following graph, I […]

WASHINGTON — Someone you probably are not familiar with has filed a suit you probably have not heard about concerning a four-word phrase you should know about. The suit could blow to smithereens something everyone has heard altogether too much about, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ACA). … The four words that […]

The Republican response to the President’s State of the Union message was delivered by Washington State Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.  It was personal, platitude-ridden, overtly religious, twee, and devoid of policy content or anything else of relevant substance – other than a naked assertion that BHO’s policies are making life harder in myriad unspecified ways. […]

The ticket to the middle class is not higher taxes on the very businesses that must create the jobs… Economic growth will come when we lower taxes for everyone, especially people who own businesses and create jobs. — Rand Paul, last night Absolutely.  The G.W. Bush presidency was terrific for economic growth!  It wasn’t a […]

Passing along a great video from INET with its interview of William Lazonick. He talks about the ideology changes through the 80’s, stock buy-backs, labor becoming a commodity and lack of real investment for the future. Yet, he mentions another very important thing… There is an ideology that only shareholders take risk, so therefore they […]

You had to be around for this one.

There are quite a few shifts happening in the global and domestic economy. I have been observing for the past week. So many people are getting confused. Here is a list of concerns… China is slowing down. Some emerging markets are facing capital outflows and are tempted to raise their central bank interest rates. Argentina […]