We have just printed the eleventh (11th) straight week in which new jobless claims have exceeded 400,000 people. As Krugman notes, “The Fed predicts disastrously high unemployment as far as the eye can see(pdf) [a]nd, in response to this dire prospect, it declares its work done.” So this it is almost palliative that Barry Ritholtz […]

Guest post by Michael Halasy AMA backs the mandate… The AMA has its annual House of Delegates meeting last week, and boy, are they concerned. Recent evidence has suggested that they have lost 12,000 members since 2009. Much of this has been due to the AMA’s support of the PPACA. Today, the HOD voted to […]

by Mike Kimel Ignorance, Fake Turing Tests, and Bads I don’t think Bryan Caplan realized he was advocating ignorance as a strategy for passing this non-Turing test. But it actually got me thinking. I may soon be spending a bit of time on a small project that some years ago I might have tackled by […]

PGL, in the process of an optimistic piece, points us to Martin Feldstein ringing in 2011. Apparently, the reason is this: The most substantial potential boost to spending comes from a temporary reduction of the payroll tax, lowering the rate paid by employees on income up to about $100,000 from 6.2 per cent to 4.2 […]

I was going to point out that finance people are not so dumb as economists,* but Echidne’s takedown of Gary Becker is so divine it deserves your attention more: This argument was initially made by Gary Becker, an economist who spent years working at the best offshore casino in the Caribbean, a very long time […]

Welcome to the New United States. Trust that Jared Bernstein (if this one shows up, instead of this one) will have more on how much future damage can be done to the economy. UPDATE: Scott Lemieux weighs in, correctly seeing it as worse than any reasonable examination of the facts would have permitted*: Systematic discrimination […]

Despite winning the big prize, evolution scores low on the scale at the Miss USA pageant: Only Miss Massachusetts and [newly crowned Miss USA, Alyssa] Campanella stood up for Darwin. Score one for Charles Darwin. Campanella, 21, of Los Angeles, who calls herself “a huge science geek,” says evolution should be taught in public schools. […]

Readers of this blog know that I am in finance, specifically global fixed income. This blog post covers wealth effects in the financial industry, which is a relatively dominant share of total US compensation, 7.3% in 2009 and likely higher now (data are truncated at 2009). My view is that economists underestimate the wealth effects […]

I’ll add the scene from It later. Or someone can put it in comments and we’ll promote it to here. UPDATE: R.I.P., Clarence Clemons. QOTD from Walter Jon Williams: Young folks may be shocked to discover that Clarence Clemons had a band before Lady Gaga.