Robert Waldmann An article with that title by Steve Silverman in Wired is getting a lot of attention. I actually know a little bit about the placebo effect and depression. Lo and behold, Silverman’s key example is the effect of placebos on depression. He briefly mentions two issues which I would like to discuss at […]
Robert Waldmann Or are they crazy like foxes ? I think Ezra Klein is being played. At least I sure hope he’s being played. Klein is in contact with the White House. Unsurprisingly, he reports that there is a bitter debate over health care reform inside the Obama administration. There are clear hints of this […]
by Bruce Webb Both sides of the Health Care debate are looking and or calculating at the effects on future elections, will including a public option play in Peoria? This I think is to misunderstand the timelines because for most people the initial passage of reform really doesn’t change anything for the next two election […]
Rebecca Wilder With the developed and developing economies printing money like it’s going out of style, the exit strategy – i.e., taking back the hundred percent increase in the monetary base (at least in the US) – is rumored to be the topic du jour at the G-20 summit later this month. According to Reuters, […]
by cactus As I understand it, the Libertarian position is that for the most part, if an entity (a person, a company, or a corporation) wants to do something with property it owns, it should generally be allowed to do so. I don’t want to be arguing with a strawman, so if I have an […]
rdan The New York Times notes that a report titled Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities on wage theft will be released Wednesday in the afternoon. UPDATE: PDF available here.
Robert Waldmann (who deeply respects our nations senior citizens) has probably written this post already but he forgot. I had a concern about the proposal to split health care in the Senate into 2 bills one to be passed as budget reconciliation (the 50 votes bill) and one not about the budget (the 60 votes […]
LBJ and Senator Green of RI c.NYTby Bruce Webb Now that Grassley and Enzi have shown where the wind was actually blowing on the ‘bi-partisan’ ‘compromise’ supposedly being worked out by the Senate Finance Committee’s Gang of Six it is time to hit the reset button and in the process clear up some confusion. Generally […]
Rebecca Wilder Poland: the bull of eastern and central Europe. While most of central and eastern Europe are either defending exchange rate pegs – this limits the ability to stimulate the economy through monetary policy – and/or running large current account deficits (see chart 2 here), Poland grew a remarkable 1.1% in the second quarter […]
by reader run “Encouraging Veterans to Commit Suicide” Appearing on Fox News “Fox and Friends” in an effort to mislead the elderly, disabled, and veterans; the GOP’s chief spin-meister Michael Steel declares healthcare reform would result in the same bad public policy as shown in a 1997 VA manual encouraging veterans to commit suicide. The […]