Yearly Archives: 2013

TransPacific Partnership to Let Foreign Investors Gut Regulations, Keep Big Ag Subsidies

Only a small part of the TransPacific Partnership is about trade as such. Most chapters are on other issues, like services, investment, government procurement, disciplines on state-owned enterprises and intellectual property.

Joining the TPP or similar free trade agreements will mean the country having to make often drastic changes to existing policies, laws and regulations, which will in turn affect the domestic economy and society.

Read more...

ObamaCare Rollout: Will the All the State Exchanges Launch on Time? A Secretive Project Out of Control

“Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” –Henry Chao, HHS, of the ObamaCare Federal Exchange

“Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” –Henry Chao, HHS, of the ObamaCare Federal Exchange

UPDATE “Credit Reporting Agency Hired to Verify Incomes for Insurance Subsidies” — and lambert scooped the world at Naked Capitalism. The Times, 2013-07-17…

Will the state Exchanges launch on time? Even if the Exchanges (now also called “marketplaces”) will only cover 7 million of the 56 million uninsured in 2014, this answer to this question is still important to some; and the political fortunes of the Democratic nomenklatura are not necessarily their first concern.

Katiebird writes:

[T]his implementation issue is not a trivial thing. Many, many, many people are counting on it. They expect to have access to health insurance and for that health insurance to give them access to actual health care. I repeat: This is not trivial. It is not a game.

Read more...

The Global Race for Inventors

Yves here. I wonder if the pattern described in this article, which is basically a brain drain of inventors to the US, is playing a meaningful role in the degradation of public education in the US. Why do the elites need to care about home-grown “talent” if they exploit the investments in schooling made by other countries?

Read more...

Germany Keeps Whistling as Iberia Starts to Burn

Yves here. One of my colleagues is back from a month in Europe (a lot of travel, and lots of meetings with economists and political types). I need to debrief him more fully, but his short take was Portugal is clearly in crisis, with Spain and Italy not far behind, and that the political train wrecks will hit faster than the economic ones. Although I can’t see how the former won’t accelerate the arrival of the latter.

Read more...

Some Datapoints on Global Political Risk

By lambert strether of Corrente.

Here’s another in my series of quote dumps on protests by country; this time, I thought I’d focus on Brazil, China, and the United States. Much of this material comes from official media, and I’m not making any representations as to accuracy of the report or the justification of the protest. There’s no particular method behind the selection, beyond crowd size, interesting tactics, concrete detail, or thoughtfulness. As always, more sources and protests welcome in comments. In the section in the United States, I was concerned I’d have to filter for events sponsored or manipulated by the legacy party apparatus, but fortunately, my concern was not warranted.

Read more...

House Republican GSE Bill Would Codify MERS, Pre-Empt Private Property Rights

The top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee has tucked a provision into his mortgage finance reform bill that would create a privately held “National Mortgage Data Repository.” The repository would basically look like MERS, the bank-owned electronic database tracking mortgage transfer. The difference is that, while MERS’ activities have drawn legal challenges across the country, the National Mortgage Data Repository would have the force of statute to carry out the exact same behavior. According to the bill text, any document arising from this repository would be seen as presumptively legal, pre-empting state and federal laws on demonstrating the right to foreclose.

Read more...

Just How Low Can Spain Go?

Yves here. Last week, we used a the latest release of an every-other-year report by Transparency International on corruption to discuss the need to come up with more granular descriptions of the many forms it takes. This post on a major bribery scandal in Spain will hopefully elicit reader comment on the common forms of corruption in the EU and how they’ve changed over time.

Read more...