When analysts and commentators go through their laundry list of what ails the hopelessly overpriced US health care system, one of the most commonly cited reasons is the cost of “defensive medicine” meaning both the cost of medical malpractice policies to doctors, plus the costs of extra tests and procedures to provide doctors with cover […]
Read more...Yves here. Doug Smith, the author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me, raised some interesting questions about how the debate about recovery is being framed. The most common approach is to look it in terms of GDP, and look at various indicators to see is progress towards […]
Read more...Full disclosure: I’ve known Amar Bhide for roughly 25 years (we both worked on the Citibank account at McKinsey, albeit never on the same project) and although we correspond only occasionally, I continue to regard his as a particularly keen observer and original thinker. He was briefly a proprietary trader, then an associate professor at […]
Read more...An article at Caixin helps clear up a mystery that has plagued Western observers, including some readers of this blog: where is all the money that is stoking Chinese real estate speculation coming from? Accounts of individuals buying 3 or 5 apartments at prices way out of line with incomes with little in the way […]
Read more...Economists have been rewarded all too well for fetishing numbers and mathematics. The self-conscious effort within the discipline to turn it into a science (a goal most real scientists would deem to be impossible, given the fickle nature of human behavior), which meant making it more mathematical, has resulted in economists being better paid than […]
Read more...While the preparation of economic data is always a fraught business, one hopes that errors are more or less symmetrical, particularly in data series that (as is the case for some important metrics in the US, like GDP), are released on an initial basis (almost without exception the only one Mr. Market notices) and tidied […]
Read more...This post first appeared on June 23, 2007 A neat little analysis by Ross Eisenbrey at the Economic Policy Institute may be difficult for union foes to explain away. It shows the proportion of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements in major European countries and the US and then shows productivity growth country by country […]
Read more...From Ed …the private sector in the west is in a higher savings and slower growth mode. The only way that the government can net save at the same time is via an increase in net exports to the emerging economies. The FT’s Geoff Dyer is right when he writes the “G20 looks to Beijing […]
Read more...It occurred to me that this story might not get all that much mainstream air time in the US, for reasons that will become obvious. We’ve been having an inquiry into the background to the Iraq war over here. There was another enquiry back in the Blair era, Hutton, summarised by wikipedia: On 18 July […]
Read more...This post first appeared on May 6, 2007 I’m certain you’re familiar with the expression “death wish.” I am beginning to wonder whether America has a banana republic wish. The country has been taking steps towards being a small-minded, elite-dominated, sham democracy. Mind you, I am pointing to a tendency, not an established fact. The […]
Read more...Richard covering for Yves here, in case that maritime internet connection, which seems OK for terse emails, is not so great for navigating 100 eurowebsites, to whizz through as much detail as possible. Just seven failures, making Chris Whalen’s EU stress tests: who knows, who cares? the main takeaway, I suppose. Not enough blood to […]
Read more...If only it was that easy. First sentence: “Pick up a piece of text and start reading and it usually becomes clear pretty quickly whether you’re reading a nonfictional news story or a fictional novel.” They lost me right there. Hat tip to Alea.
Read more...Cross posted from The Economic Populist. By Garrett Johnson Most people think that the Wall Street bailouts ended at least a year ago. They would be wrong. (Reuters) – Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers’ total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog […]
Read more...Crossposted from New Deal 2.0 Another volley from Marshall Auerback, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. Larry Summers’s misguided approach to deficits and surpluses could strangle our long-term vitality. Virtually every profile on Larry Summers tells us that he is one of the most brilliant economists of his generation, […]
Read more...Is the economics version of defining deviancy downward mean that the new normal of high unemployment and inadequate job growth is seen as acceptable by policymakers (at least those not up for re-election this November)? It’s one thing to recognize that we are working through a painful hangover after a private sector borrowing binge that […]
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