Refinance rates (list) for 15-year Fixed Rate Mortgage in my area: Bank of America 3.625% JPMorganChase 4.125% And that’s if everything is right.

As regular readers know, I have been arguing since long before angrybear.blogspot.com existed that Democrats should campaign on raising taxes on rich people (I was convinced in 1993 or 1994). One of the facts that all savvy people think they know is that people of modest means in the USA reject the proposal to soak […]

I think Democrats are wise to punch hippies. I grew up as a wannabe hippy and I volunteer. Oddly a lefty blogger is convinced that what the Democratic party needs is a Tea Party of the left, but it can’t have one, because of the MSM and hippy baching progressive bloggers. My jaw drops after […]

In recent years the BLS has developed a new database where they can track the jobs created by an establishment over time. It is called Business Dynamics and you can read about it here. Research using the new database has altered the basic view of where jobs are created. The old view that jobs are […]

by run 75441 The Medicare Sky is Falling Part of the Medicare Sky Falling story is a claim that doctors are refusing to accept new Medicare patients because of low payments. It is common for politicians and pundits to pontificate declaring Medicare is broken. A doctor himself, Wyoming Senator Barrasso made the claim to CNN’s […]

Fitch won’t downgrade the U.S., but they have downgraded Chirstiedom, officially because he didn’t pillage the state’s severely-underfunded Pension Funds enough. Of course, those Pension Funds wouldn’t be so underfunded if they had been funded instead of f*ck*d by the Whitman Administration’s Coke-Induced Budgeting Practices. (The “miracle of compound interest” includes that it doesn’t compound […]

by Mike Kimel Most economists believe that unemployment benefits increase the unemployment rate. The idea is that even having a relatively small income coming in (from unemployment) can encourage people to stay jobless just a little while longer. And no doubt there are people who play the unemployment compensation game fairly well. Now, consider severance […]

Scott Lemieux linked to an article that in turn referenced a BEA report on state GDP gains with this map: or, if you just want to see the numbers, “Growth only slightly lower than Michigan’s” should be a great campaign slogan.* *And that’s ignoring that the second-largest contributor to that gain is Finance and Insurance. […]

Governor Perry of Texas is making the claim that the Texas 2003 tort reform lead to Texas having 20,000 more doctors. I challenge him to document his numbers. Here is the number of doctors registered to practice in Texas before and after the 2003 tort reform. The data is from the official state registry that […]