Category Archives: Regulations and regulators

Some States Fighting Medicare Plan to Require Minimum Staffing in Nursing Homes

Sadly, there is pushback against a proposed Medicare rule to assure (barely) adequate staffing in nursing homes. Please comment in favor!

How the Fed Created the Post-2008 Global Safety Net for Banks

The “liquidity” support provided by the Fed to megabanks through cross-border lending in fact acted as subsidies.

Save Billions or Stick With Humira? Drug Brokers Engage in Blatant Price Gouging as FTC Investigates and Some Health Plans Rebel

Demand that state legislators investigate pharmacy benefit manager price-gouging for biologics like Humira when cheaper biosimilars exist

The Lehman Disaster and Why It Matters Today

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, a giant investment bank, filed for bankruptcy. The shock was profound; world markets melted down.

Cost Of Living Crisis Threatens EU Energy Transition

Worries that EU voters will reject the climate change diet, at least partly due to failure to impose sacrifices on the rich, who are carbon pigs

How Shareholder Value Fixation Turns AI and Robotics into a Recipe for Failure

New technologies are not the problem. It’s a system distorted by a flawed shareholder value ideology.

BMW: Gasoline Car Ban Poses “Imminent Risk” To European Automakers

BMW warns that the 2035 EU mandate to end sales of new fossil fuel vehicles will be a mass death event for most EU car makers

How Economists Distorted Economic Theory to Help Big Companies Get Bigger

Economists had to play fast and loose with economic theory to deploy their merger “efficiency” arguments.

Technotage on the Rise? More Efforts to Stymie Job-Threatening, Sometimes Hazardous “Innovations”

Ant-technology action, or technotage, seems to be increasing. Is this a trend or just coincidence?

Book Review: Two Critiques of America’s Ailing Health Care System

Two new books chronicle the shortcomings of the nation’s health care system, if you can call it that.

Medicare for All, Not Medicare Advantage

How Medicare Advantage plans raid taxpayer funds and routinely fail to deliver the care that patients expect and deserve.

Jonesing on Carbon

A reminder that the rich are grossly dispropirtionate carbon fuel users.

The Scourge of Corporate Financialization: Income Inequity, Employment Instability, Productive Fragility

Stock buybacks, aka corporate financialization, as a mode of predatory value extraction

A Peek at Big Pharma’s Playbook That Leaves Many Americans Unable to Afford Their Drugs

The Biden Adminstration has implemented some modest curbs on drug prices. Big Pharma is fighting a rearguard action in court.