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

Group appointments to the doctor

Another health story by the Boston Globe gives new meaning to the term group practice: When Dr. Gene Lindsey arrived to see his 4 p.m. appointment on a recent Thursday, his nine patients already were seated on folding chairs arranged in a semicircle around a table of snacks. Lindsey, a cardiologist, shook each patient’s hand, […]

Spreading the wealth of blame – Thomas Friedman

hat tip radamisto NYT notes: …using Citigroup as Exhibit A — how some of our country’s best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasn’t only the bankers. This financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in […]

I’d like to refinance, please.

In one of the stupidest wastes of Treasury monies this month—a major accomplishment, though AIG hasn’t hit the trough again yet, so there might be hope—the Treasury wants to subsidize new mortgages (link to CR): Under the plan, Treasury would buy securities underpinning loans guaranteed by the two mortgage giants, which are temporarily under the […]

Is it true that foreigners finance American debt?

This is the question raised by Brenda Rosser in a couple of posts at Econospeak Is it true? To which Barkley Rosser (no relation to Brenda and in fact living on the opposite side of the world-it really is an odd and small blogosphere sometimes) replies in part as follows: Brenda,The Chinese central bank has […]

…and other conditions

Daily Reckoning provides this quote on the original week of the frantic search for legislation regarding the bailout: Take Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California), a bailout critic. During debate over the bailout bill that passed the House Friday, he said of the previous bill that had failed, “Many of us were told in private conversations that […]

The MA experiment

The Boston Globe has uncovered data showing that the amount insurance companies reimburse hospitals in Massachusetts can vary dramatically from hospital to hospital. Private insurance data obtained by the Globe’s Spotlight Team show that the Brigham [& Women’s Hospital], Mass[achsetts] General, Children’s Hospital[, all in Boston,] and a few others are, on average, paid about […]

Revisiting an Early Look at the Recession

by cactus Revisiting an Early Look at the Recession Now that the recession is officially here, I’d like to revisit a post I wrote in March entitled How is This Recession Not Like Other Recessions?. In it, I note the following: So in terms of politics… what we see is that the Fed is much […]

Three Charts in a Tangle: What Lending?

UPDATE: Credit where due category: H/T to Felix Salmon for pointing to this chart at bignose.org, which gives you borrowings relative to GDP. I often hate line graphs, especially when they include outliers that skew the axis, making it virtually unreadable. (This may be a result of seeing several papers this semester with Chilean/US$ exchange […]

Social Security Monthly Balances: Oct update

Projecting the long-term health of Social Security is of necessity subject to uncertainty, the known unknowns if you will. But you can if you like sample the short term health by consulting Treasury’s Monthly Trust Fund Reports which gives balances to the penny with a one month lag, and compare them to the various projections […]