Robert Reich asks and answers the question “Which do you trust less – Big Business (including Wall Street) or Big Government?”: But fundamentally, the debate is absurd. It’s not the purpose of the private sector to protect the public. Companies like Goldman Sachs, Massey Energy, WellPoint, and BP will do everything they can to make […]
Jon Walker at FDL begins a chat on politics and agendas. The big picture is built on thousands of pixels…so is national politics apparently if your advertizing budget is small. The elected officials in the cooperatives formed a large pool of potential recruits to run for political office and to be elected to positions within […]
Firedoglake takes on Simpson: Alan Simpson: Cutting Social Security Benefits to “Take Care of the Lesser People in Society” …cuts he would recommend to the President and Congress on CNBC, Simpson said “We are going to stick to the big three,” meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His sentiments haven’t changed. (Rdan here…the transcript reads […]
Did others notice that year-to-date inflation, as measured by the CPI, is zero?
“Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan.” Unless you’re a chubby chaser, it’s not an image that one immediately thinks of as licentious. After a few days, Apple is at least considering this. (The headline appears to jump the gun.) Yes, it’s that time of the year again.
There was an interesting blog post over at the Macroblog (Atlanta Fed) regarding productivity. John Robertson and Pedro Silos highlight the contributions to GDP growth from various factors, including productivity and employment. One of their findings: As this chart shows, relatively high labor productivity growth during a recession is not a phenomenon isolated to the […]
Industrial production and housing starts were reported today. It has been well covered elsewhere, but I though I would make a couple of comments. Compared to other cycles this recovery in industrial production continues to be moderate. It is stronger than in the weak recoveries, but compared to the depth of the downturns the rebound […]
Debt, Deficits, and Defense…The Sustainable Defense Task Force set in motion by Rep. Barney Frank has comprehensive suggestions. It is more specific than other suggestions I have read. David Ignatius of the Washington Post sees deficits concern as a possible unifying process among right/left thinking. I don’t see it. Bruce Bartlett comments on deficits and […]
Health care reform blog reminds us both complexity of costs: Thus, areas with high medical spending do not have offsetting lower pharmaceutical spending; in fact, if the coding practices in different regions are not too dissimilar, the substantial variation in pharmaceutical spending does not seem to be strongly associated with variations in medical spending at […]