by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Tenet Buys Vanguard, Wave of the Future? The three most frequently used words in health care strategy today are: Integration – more providers employed by hospitals, networks and corporate providers Consolidation – networks and corporate providers getting larger Alignment – trying to develop business models that make […]

Real wages decline by Kenneth Thomas Speaking of inequality by Kenneth Thomas Wage stickiness coming unglued. And an op ed by David Cay Johnston this last week: Breaking news alert! Wages fell at the fastest rate ever recorded during the first quarter of this year, the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Hourly wages fell 3.8 […]

Maggie Mahar at Health Beat Blog Obamacare – Fear – Mongers Poison Minds; Hatred Blinds” writes about the confusion about, the anger at, and the mischaracterization of the PPACA by every day people, medical workers, and politicians. Having myself presented the facts to rebut assumptions and fallacies, I find her comments interesting and on the […]

A longer-than-planned post on today’s Supreme Court opinion on state-college-admissions affirmative action programs.  (I’m up in Michigan’s Thumb region, sans cable and regular web service, and using my phone as a Wi Fi hotspot via the PdaNet app. I can attest that PdaNet is awesome.)  Here it is: The headline on Politico reads, “SCOTUS passes […]

by Linda beale Market Power, Minimum Wages, and the Sins of Friedmania Two items caught my attention in today’s (June 22) newspapers and they represent diametrically opposed positions on what matters in society.  One, by Paul Krugman, deals with the problems of monopoly rents–especially in industries in which there is very little production in this […]

This simple ~ 4 minute recording comes from Colin Gordon’s “Growing Apart A Political History of American Inequality” . Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism picks up on it also. It is a good read in its entirety. Economists View also has it on today’s links. The video portion below gives a snap shot of what […]

As long since noted by Krugman, for the monetary authority to be able to stimulate demand when the safe short term interest rate is almost exactly zero,  it has to be able to credibly pre-commit to causing high inflation, by keeping that interest rate extremely low in the future when  the economy has recovered  and […]

The quick and dirty rule of thumb is that the relationship between bond yields and the S&P 500 PE is one-to-one. That is, 100 basis point change in bond yields should cause about a 100 basis point change in the PE. Since WWII, the long term trend for earnings growth has been some 7%, or […]