by Bruce Webb HOLD THE PRESSES. I am deleting this post. It is not clear that the document posted on the Finance Committee website actually reflects Baucus’s new proposal. Why they chose to put an older document up this morning is a mystery. Until I get it figured out this will have to be a […]

Rebecca The BLS establishment survey (nonfarm payroll) reports that the accumulated job loss since December 2007 is 5.02% (almost 7 million jobs), blowing the total job loss of the previous “biggie” recessions, the 73-75 and 81-82 recessions, out of the water by 2.5% and 2%, respectively. There’s no question that it has been bad, with […]

by Bruce Webb The current line of attack on Health Care reform from Republicans is that it proposes to Rob Gramma to Pay Pedro. I am not going to address the care for illegals canard today but do want to probe just what HR3200 does for Medicare on net. Starting from the following two charts […]

Robert Waldmann McClatchyVia Jed Lewinson. Instead of a nationwide government insurance program, [House Majority Whip Jim] Clyburn is urging other Democrats to accept a scaled-down public option that would be tested as a pilot program in several parts of the country. That’s it ! I have a proposal. Tell reluctant senators and representatives that, if […]

rdan Mark Thoma beat me to this one, but I am happy he wrote the following and made the links:Study hard and stay in school socialism.

rdan Elizabeth Warren of the Congressional Oversight Committee for TARP, and champion of an active voice for consumer protection regulation, offers her thoughts in Real Change: Turning up the heat on non-bank lenders with one of her latest essays at New Deal 2.0, part of the Roosevelt Institution. We have watched regulation slip away, which […]

Robert Waldmann finds himself more than usually ignorant about a topic which interests him (hard as that is to believe). Medicare has a budget shortfall of present value of a whole whole lotta dough. This tends to make people worry, and makes many believe that benefits will be cut by the health care reform bills. […]

By Spencer The employment report was discouraging. In contrast to last month when the leading indicators of employment appeared to be stabilizing,they resumed their downtrend this month. Most importantly, hours worked fell o.3% from an upward revised 99.2 to 98.9. the best that can be said about this now is that the rate of decline […]