By Mike Kimel Optimal Tax Rates for Generating Economic Growth According to Barro-Sahasakul Tax Data This piece is a bit more wonky than what I normally post. I recently re-read “Macroeconomic Effects from Government Purchases and Taxes” by Barro & Redlick. I was struck by how different the conclusions they make about taxes are from […]
by Beverly Mann The Difference Between Defending DOMA and Defending Neo-Nazis and the ACA A post via Blog of Legal Times on Wednesday titled “King & Spalding Offers New Details on Marriage Mess,” which summarizes a report that day in one of its sister ALM (American Law Media) publications, the Atlanta-based Daily Report Online by […]
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 […]