by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Accountable Care “Smackdown” Part II While the feds were developing regulations for Medicare ACOs, both the feds and the American Hospital Association were developing cost numbers for ACO start-ups. Today the AHA published its preliminary numbers, listing 23 major competencies to form and operate a hospital-based ACO […]
Today Eurostat released April 2011 inflation for the Euro area. Prices are increasing at a 2.8% annual pace, up from 2.7% in March and very much above the ECB’s comfort zone of around but slightly below 2%. Today’s report is the second release and includes the cross section of price gains below the headline number. […]
by Mike Kimel The Historical Relationship Between the Economy and the S&P 500, Part 1 This post is the first in a series on the historical relationship between the economy and the stock market. Data used in this post is the adjusted close of the S&P 500 going back to 1950 and quarterly nominal GDP […]
By Daniel Becker Stock market is up, Profits are up and banks are safe. So what? Unemployment is somewhere between going down and I can’t get no satisfaction. Housing values are still falling. A new nationwide survey from real estate Web site Zillow.com says the value of U.S. homes fell 3% from January 1 to […]
For all of our economic problems here in the US, a simple measure of ‘misery’ illustrates that US households are less miserable in March 2011 than those in the Euro area. The chart below illustrates the simple ‘misery index’, which is the unemployment rate plus inflation. The blue line is a 45-degree line; those countries […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Accountable Care “Smackdown” The American Medical Group Association represents about 400 very large and sophisticated multi-specialty physicians groups, such as the Cleveland Clinic group and Intermountain (Utah) group. The Obama administration had counted on these groups to be the first to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), starting […]
Today Eurostat released their estimate of Euro area growth for the first quarter of 2011. The economy grew smartly, or 0.8% on the quarter on a seasonally- and working day- adjusted basis. On the face of it, Euro area growth, which is 3.3% on an annualized basis, dwarfs the 1.8% seen in the US economy. […]
Please expect new posts shortly. The Social Security Trustees report was puiblished 12:30 today so Bruce will be posting, Rebecca has a post and chart for Europe, Rusty has some more thoughts, and I have several items in mind.
Excess Rents Datapoint of the Day: Since the NYT doesn’t pay Paul Krugman for his blog posts, why should reading those count as part of the “20 free articles” non-subscribers are allowed? I want the Grapelli track, but not enough to pay for a six-CD set. This—built by government employees—is the greatest accomplishment in music […]