Inflation is low and has been declining for years. I want to present a model to explain a dynamic between inflation and unit labor costs. First let’s look at a chart of the two of them over the years. (semi-annual data, % change from year ago) They move together with more noise in the unit […]

Maggie Mahar at The Health Beat Blog writes bout the exchanges. Paul Krugman: “There are two remarkable things about this kind of doomsaying. One is that the doomsayers haven’t rethought their premises despite being wrong again and again — perhaps because the news media continue to treat them with immense respect.” If you Google “Obamacare,” […]

Previously, I had written on Fair Market Value and its use by the CBO’s Douglas Elmendorf to rate the risk of Student Loans as advocated by both The New America Foundation and the Heritage Foundation. A rebuttal answer to a partisan CBO, the right-leaning New America Foundation, and the conservative Heritage Foundation on the usage […]

Back in 2009 I put up a post with the title Joe Biden? The Map Office is Calling! after Joe had apparently given a green light to Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. In it I pointed to a study by Toukan and Cordesman Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities […]

So the question has arisen as to whether the yield curve in Japan has inverted before its most recent recessions. And the answer is no… Credit seeking alpha for this chart and Alan Thomson at Terra Firma Financial for digging it out. (JGB is Japanese government bonds.) Before the last 3 recessions in Japan the […]

CORP. TAX CUT = GROWTH? Um, Not So Much — Contrary to popular conservative dogma, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has found no substantial correlation between corporate tax reductions and economic growth since 1947.

by Dale Coberly How to Sound Insane by Talking Like a Bi Partisan Expert on Social Security I apologize for the next couple of paragraphs because they sound overworked and insane,  but that’s what happens when you try to illustrate the way Washington talks about Social Security. Try to imagine you have to buy a medicine […]

Via Economist’s view: Mark Thoma writes:  This is a research summary from the NBER Digest. It discusses work from Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Song that finds “Workers bear substantial costs as a result of the ‘shock’ of rising import competition”: Employment Effects of International Trade, by Claire Brunel, NBER Digest: In the past two decades, […]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/03/junk-health-insurance/index.htm   Consumer Reports, which also destroys that story. They take a look at the Florida woman’s cancelled health policy and compare it to what she could—affordably—get by shopping on the exchange. Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried […]