(Reuters) – Invoking Pope Benedict, Republican Representative Paul Ryan defended his budget plan on Thursday at Georgetown University, where a group of the Jesuit institution’s faculty has accused him of misusing Catholic teachings to push cuts to programs that serve the poor. “The overarching threat to our whole society today is the exploding federal debt,” […]

by Mike Kimel Ayn Rand v. Thomas Aquinas in Paul Ryan’s Mind Think Progress piece on Paul Ryan. Think Progress has a post noting that though Paul Ryan used to go around telling people he got into politics because of Ayn Rand, and he required all his aides to read Atlas Shrugged, now he tells […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health care thoughts: Cross-conflicting regulations health facility edition The most recent regulatory question I had trouble answering. The situation is as follows (the state will remain nameless): State nursing home inspectors: certain antibiotics cannot be administered for certain conditions without a three day lab culture being done first; if the […]

Note: This post originally appeared, in slightly different form, at the author’s personal blog, Diogenes of Brooklyn. It appears here with that blogger’s kind permission. He does talk in the third person sometimes. by Diogenes of Brooklyn Like most Americans, Diogenes knows nothing of economics and finance. But quite a lot about the ways that […]

Mark Thoma points us to Republicans Want to Repeal Resolution Authority the House Republicans on the Financial Services Committee just voted to repeal “resolution authority.” Let’s review the history. When the crisis hit, the government bailed out many financial firms — shadow banks as they are known. That’s not what it does when an ordinary […]

Guest post by Kenneth Thomas  Social Security Hurt by Republican Jobs Obstructionism The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published its commentary on Monday’s release of the Social Security Trustees Report, which found that the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted in 2033. CEPR rightly blames the recession for the deterioration of Social […]

by Linda Beale Reform that “high” statutory corporate tax rate? Not necessary I got an interesting item pushed to me from an online-MBA website blog where today’s item was on “10 Big Businesses That Barely Pay Taxes“. It looks at companies like GE, duPont, Verizon, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Boeing, Google and others that aggressively maximize the […]

by Dale Coberly SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY SIMPLIFIEDThe Trustees Report came out again this week. And all the newspeople told us again that we are doomed. Doomed. “Social Security is running out of money!” Except it isn’t. And all the Professional Defenders of Social Security rushed out to tell us, “We can save Social Security: just […]

by Mike KimelToday is a travel day for me. I’m flying to Toronto to give a lecture on ensemble methods, a statistical approach which involves combining estimates produced by other methods. Its something I first worked on in 2001, and come to think about it, perhaps it deserves a post. But not today. Today’s post, […]