by Mike Kimel American Enterprise Institute Economists Redux The other day I wrote a post about economists at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a prominent conservative think-tank. The post began with this paragraph from a story in the NY Times Politicians sometimes say that lower tax rates lead to higher economic growth, which in turn […]
Guest post by Kenneth Thomas of Middle Class Political Economist U.S. has 18th best unemployment benefits in OECD; also trails 13 non-OECD countries Tim Vlandas at EU Welfare States flags some important recent International Monetary Fund data on the generosity of a number of countries’ unemployment benefits. The metric used is the gross replacement rate […]
Lifted from the rjs newsletter: Young vs. old – Three of the top five symptoms searched for on Yahoo Mobile in January were early pregnancy, herpes and H.I.V. None of these symptoms showed up among the top searches on desktop computers, which are more likely to be used by older people. The most popular symptom […]
Via the Finance Addict comes a survey by American Banker regarding ideas of too big to fail Now here’s a snapshot of the survey results (as of 2:00am EST):So here’s my question: if banks, themselves, do not believe that Too Big to Fail is over then why should we?
Bill Moyers points us back to banks and fiduciary responsibilities: “You shouldn’t run a financial system on the expectation of government support. We’re supposed to be a free enterprise system,” Volcker tells Moyers. “The problem of course is once they get rescued, does that lead to the conclusion they’ll get rescued in the future?” From […]
by Dale Coberly DAMNED LIARS AND SOCIAL SECURITY There are liars, damned liars, and “non partisan experts.” The non partisan experts are expert liars, “non partisan” because that’s the best lie of all. A damned liar need not be an expert, but he is usually pretty clever at mixing “true” facts, or at least “facts […]
by Michael Halasy Drug shortages and the mythical marketI read an interesting article by Gehrett in the January issue of JAMA. In response to the increased utilization of generic drugs (currently about 70% of drugs used in the US), a fact which should be applauded, we have seen a frightening increase in drug shortages. In […]
Michael has written for Angry Bear in the past (see two of many Prometheus and Bundled Payments and Medical Tourism, separating facts from fiction). He is a practicing PA in Emergency Medicine. My undergraduate education started with economics. I function as a health policy analyst for a couple of national organizations and as a health […]
by Linda Beale More on Private Equity, Carried Interest, Wealth, and Romney Those who’ve read much of this blog are aware of the various arguments against the notion that private equity firms are “do-gooders” that we should encourage and even subsidize (through the carried interest provision). On the whole, I believe they are part of […]