Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

HR676: Serious policy? or Simple political posturing?

by Bruce Webb A lot of progressives insist that there is a simple golden-bullet solution to the health care crisis. All we need to do is substitute the 30 page HR676 Single Payer/Medicare For All bill for the 1990 page HR3962. Which led me to ask “How can you possibly supply code language to overhaul […]

This is What a Giant Vampire Squid Looks Like

Via Greg Mitchell’s Twitter feed, lying isn’t just for the IB branch any more: Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman’s then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003. Unable to identify a […]

Are exporters in Asia real-ly losing their competitive edges?

by Rebecca Central banks across Asia are concerned and actively engaged in some kind of currency manipulation – direct intervention, quasi-capital controls, and/or public speech (I will refer to this later, but RGE published a great article to the fact) – as investors flock to global capital markets seeking the “risk-on” trade. Central banks are […]

That 3.5% rise in GDP

UPDATED Divorced one like Bush wants to know how accurate the polling was that came up with a consensous that the GDP rose 3.5% in the third quarter. I did my own poll last night at band practice and 100% of the self employed band members (only one for an employer and that’s the public […]

HR3962: the new House Bill and its Scoring

by Bruce Webb Well I have been venturing around the blogosphere and it is grievously clear that most people did not take my advice and Read the Bill!. Well it is not too late: http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf (3.3 MB) Moreover CBO followed up with their preliminary analysis:http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10688/hr3962Rangel.pdf The above image is Table 2 and it shows the […]

Dr. Black asks, AngryBear Answers

The question: How much was credit being funneled away from all other sectors in the economy? The answer: Very little if any. Neither the general consumer lending: nor the specific Real Estate lending: appears to run in a different direction that Business Loans, except possibly, in the latter case, in late 2003 and early 2004. […]