by Bruce Webb (Update. A tech problem currently prevents me from responding to comments, though not from updating the post. Keep those questions coming and maybe I can address them in a later post.) With the release of the Baucus Chairman’s Mark it became apparent that there are some profound misconceptions floating around the existing […]

by Rebecca The Federal Reserve released its quarterly Flow of Funds Accounts, and the message is crystal clear: the private sector is dropping debt burden, while the public sector is growing it. Quarterly private sector debt growth, households + nonfinancial business + finance, has been slowing or negative since the second half of 2007. In […]

By Spencer, Unless the economy-market is on the verge of a major unforeseen calamity S&P 500 earnings per share growth will turn positive in the fourth quarter. Generally analysts are positive on the market because they expect very strong earnings growth in 2010. This will be the twelfth time since 1950 that earnings growth has […]

by Linda Beale Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development–Levin Keynote Michigan’s Carl Levin gave the keynote address at the Washington conference of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development. (For information on the organization, visit its website at http://www.financialtaskforce.org. Levin’s remarks, and soon a YouTube of the conference, are available here.). […]

John Quiggin finally makes explicit What Everyone Knows: that the clusterfuck that has been made of Macroeconomics is due largely to an attempt to leverage (insufficiently robust) Microeconomic Theory: the search for a macroeconomic theory founded on (roughly) neoclassical micro, which has been the main direction of macro research for 40 years or so, was […]

by cactus Norman Borlaug, Michael Jackson, and the Invisible Hand When Adam Smith described the concept of laissez-faire capitalism, he argued that it was not just efficient but moral. As long as everyone acted in their own self-interest and the government did not interfere, the Invisible Hand would guide market forces toward the best possible […]

WalterJon finds a brilliant judge’s response to a “birther” case: The Court observes that the President defeated seven opponents in a grueling campaign for his party’s nomination that lasted more than eighteen months and cost those opponents well over $300 million. Then the President faced a formidable opponent in the general election who received $84 […]

by Bruce Webb (h/t kharris) A Summary of the Specifications for Health Insurance Coverage Provided by the Staff of the Senate Finance Committee. ‘Preliminary’ doesn’t begin to describe this, it is not even based on the full text of the Chairman’s mark as released this morning, which is probably just as well since that really […]

by Rebecca Wilder There is always an agenda when a central banker declares the recession is over – and Bernanke is no different. The following facts remain: US GDP contracted at a 1% annualized pace in the second quarter of 2009 (its fourth consecutive drop), industrial output grew just two consecutive months after declining every […]

Andrew Samwick: Government bureaucrats don’t reduce costs. Market competition reduces costs. The challenge for health care reform is to get the market competition into the places where we want it — providers and insurers competing to deliver better services at lower prices — and out of the places where we don’t want it — insurers […]