There are seventy-one pages to this FTC report. My commentary looks at 5 edited (mine) pages of the report. The intent is to introduce you to Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the control they have over the market. The services they provide has been integrated with the healthcare insurance companies. Which makes this a dynamic […]
– by New Deal democrat In my discussion yesterday of why the Sahm Rule might be giving a false signal at present, I noted that “in addition to the 1980-81 double-dip period, significantly the only other time [a big increase in new entrants into the labor force leading up to a recession] even came close […]
by Merrill Goozner GoozNews Government prognosticators once again foresee rising health care costs amid falling insurance coverage. Is this an election prediction? Each mid-year, economists and actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services offer their predictions for the direction of health care spending over the next decade. This year they projected health care’s share of […]
by Chandra Childers Economic Policy Institute Working Economics Blog Some background on the author; Chandra Childers is a senior policy and economic analyst with the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) at EPI. Her work is primarily focused on supporting EARN’s state and local policy research and advocacy network in the Southern United States. Childers is committed […]
by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.6 From sufficiency to planned obsolescence… and back? In the Grundrisse, Karl Marx argued that capital’s response to the barrier to increasing production posed by satiated consumption took three paths: promoting greater consumption of existing products, expanding […]
– by New Deal democrat AB: What does the Sahm rule signify? If the three-month moving average of the jobless rate rises by at least a half-percentage point from its low during the previous 12 months, then a recession has started. NDd; In my summation of Friday’s employment report, I wrote that “[t]here will probably […]
By David Zetland The one-handed economist I found, while reading this book, that I paid a lot more attention to concrete, and steel, and other aspects of our built environment. It forced me to balance away from the digital world where I spend too much time. The author, Ed Conway, devotes a section to each of […]
by Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research That’s what readers must conclude after reading this Washington Post’s piece on President Biden’s plans to increase corporate taxes and taxes on the rich. At one point, the piece reports the response to these plans from Rep. Steven Scalise (R-La), the second-ranking Republican in the House: “He tries […]
There is another version to this which I may get into in the comments section. CDS were not known at the time to be dangerous investments by Wall Street Banks. Besides Long Term Capital, AIG was offering CDS insuring other CDS. The problem arose when AIG’s credit default swaps did not call for collateral to […]
– by New Deal democrat AB: July 3rd, NDd mentioned he would review the comparison between the Household and the Establishment Survey Reports today. He had initially look at the comparison July 3. In the past few months, my focus has been on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., no further […]