Note:This was going to be short pieces about things I missed during a week of illness. It turned into a Very Long Piece riffing on two posts from Capital Gains and Games. And that’s without even mentioning the bravura work Stan Collender is doing there: see, for instance, this note that a deficit reduction bill […]
Health Care Thoughts: Draft Exchange Rules Published The Obama administration has published draft rules for the formation and operation of Affordable Insurance Exchanges, a key element in the PPACA (Obamacare) plan to increase insurance coverage. There is a 75 day comment and then more time to digest the comments before final rules are issued. Implementation […]
by Beverly Mann Update: Business journalist Merrill Goozner has a terrific in-depth deconstruction of the so-called Texas Miracle at TheFiscalTimes, at Perry’s Texas Miracle less than meets the eye, published last Friday. Texas, the jobs engine? Or Texas, the jobs-laundering engine? An op-ed piece mentioned by a reader two weekends ago in the LA Times, […]
by: Daniel Becker Ok some more information to bolster my position that my flower shop being down this year another 4.5% compared to last year (at least the decline is leveling off) is not the results of government debt or too much taxation or banks not lending or unions… nope, my shop is off because […]
Over at Economist’ View he has posted a nice set of charts on the GDP Gap, employment versus the long term trend and other measures of how much excess capacity the economy has that have become very popular among economists over the last couple of years. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ But these charts never include profits in their […]
by Mike Kimel A Post: Tax Burdens, Presidents, and Subsequent Economic Growth – A Few Pictures, Part 1 Last week I had a post looking at the relationship between the change in the tax burden in the first two years of a Presidential administration and the growth of real GDP during the remaining years of […]
Jobs growth is a lagging indicator of economic activity, so the June report confirms that the US economy has been in a deep rut (Marshall Auerback calls it a ‘fully-fledged New York City style pot hole’). Yes, the US economy is growing; but sub-2% really ‘feels’ like stagnation, if not recession for many. As always, […]
Mark Thoma remembers that in the last Congressional elections, Republicans campaigned on how the Democrats were bringing uncertainty to the economy. “Does anyone think that uncertainty has been reduced since Republicans gained a majority in the House of Representatives?”
The employment was bad news as payroll employment only rose by 18,000 as compared to the last months disappointing rise of 25,000. Government employment fell 39,000 versus 48,000 inMay. Private payrolls expanded only 57,000 that was even weaker than the prior months 73,000. Over the last two months payroll employment was essentially unchanged. Moreover, the […]