A short video worth watching: (hat tip David Zetland)

Three writers point to the need to maintain energy and attention to the Obama Grand Bargain. Mark Weisbrot at The Guardian writes on Barack Obama’s carefully crafted economic populism carries the day: The media are a huge factor in most elections in the US, and outside of Fox News and the rightwing press, most of the […]

By Jeff McCord of The Investor Advocate USA: History’s Largest Free Port for Financial Freebooters? The term “freebooter,” derived from the Dutch vrijbuiter, means one who openly steals property. Once freebooters sailed the coasts of the Carolinas, Florida and Caribbean isles from free ports such as Port Royal, Jamaica, taking what they wished with little […]

It is now clear that the calculations Nate Silver made just before the election were a better guide to what was about to happen than Joe Scarborough’s gut or the voices in Peggy Noonan’s head.  This is not a high bar to clear.  Many other poll aggregators made similar predictions. However, Silver’s performance this year […]

Here in suburban New Jersey, we are just now getting power back throughout town. (As of yesterday—remember, remember, the Fifth of November—we were the town in Essex County that had the least restored houses.) A lot of progress today, with teams from Texas and Florida among those called in (which presumably left the NJ teams […]

For anyone who ever thought they were too busy to vote, meet 21-year-old Galicia Malone. The south suburban Dolton mom-to-be was spotted at her polling place Tuesday morning on her way to give birth at a local hospital. Cook County Clerk David Orr said Malone’s contractions were five minutes apart when she showed up around […]

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism brings us news of an important study addressing the issues of determining the costs of medical care, delivery, and insurance: A remarkably important and persuasive paper that calls into question the need for “reforming” Medicare has not gotten the attention it warrants. “An Examination of Health-Spending Growth In The United […]

The US Senate election in MA is between Senator Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren. While there has been some discussion on financial concerns, there hasn’t been a lot to report of substance during the election campaign for us to post. One of the tweets making the rounds is what it would be like to […]

The New York Times points us to one anomaly in the idea of “free markets”. Dean Baker (and many others) of course has championed taking a more critical look at this set of issues for years.  But most readers know that “free market” is an election slogan and a metaphorical  apocryphal story line rather than  something […]