J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2237
August 5, 2010
Wow!: Medicare Spending Edition
Paul Krugman writes:
Bending The Curve: The new Medicare Trustees Report... Table IIIA-2 in this year’s report and last year’s report.... [T:]he Medicare actuaries believe that the cost-saving provisions in the Obama health reform will make a huge difference to the long-run budget outlook. Yes, it’s just a projection, and debatable like all projections. And it’s still not enough. But anyone who both claims to be worried about the long-run deficit and was opposed to health reform has...
Jobless Claims Rise 19,000 to 479,000
Jeffry Bartash:
Jobless claims rise 19,000 to 479,000: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The number of people applying for initial unemployment benefits jumped 19,000 to 479,000 in the latest week to the highest level since early April, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Ryan Avent on Gary Becker and Greg Mankiw
From Ryan Avent:
Labour unions: The union menace: I GUESS that one of the benefits of being an old Nobel Prize winner [Gary Becker:] is that you can say things like this and not feel the need to provide a shred of supporting evidence:
The real threat to a robust recovery on the labor side has come from employer and entrepreneurial fears that once the economic environment improves, a Democratic Congress and administration will pass pro-union and other pro-worker legislation...
I Don't Know Whether I Want to Invest in Their Company or Nuke Them from Orbit...
Ooh boy. Is this really the board of advisors a biotech company would want?
Dr. Alibek was formerly a Soviet Army Colonel, and served as First Deputy Chief of the civilian branch of the Soviet Union's biological weapons program until he defected to the United States in 1992 and subsequently served as a consultant to numerous U.S. government agencies in the areas of medical microbiology, biological weapons defense, and biological weapons nonproliferation.
Dr. Bailey is the...
August 4, 2010
Extremely Rough: A Note on Bullard's Interpretation in his "Seven Faces of 'The Peril'" Paper of Benhabib et al. (2001).
Extremely rough: A note on James Bullard (2010), "Seven Faces of 'The Peril'" http://research.stlouisfed.org/econ/bullard/pdf/SevenFacesFinalJul28.pdf...
Here is the graph:
Bullard:
In this paper I discuss the possibility that the U.S. economy may become enmeshed in a Japanese-style, deflationary outcome within the next several years. To frame the discussion, I rely on an analysis that emphasizes two possible long-run outcomes (steady states) for the economy, one which is consistent...
Eric Alterman, Jonathan Chait, and the Narcissism of Small Differences...
Jonathan Chait:
Journolist And Liberal Mutual Loathing | The New Republic: Eric Alterman, arriving late to the post-Journolist comment-fest, points out that, in many ways, it made liberals less ideologically cohesive:
Many of us could barely stand one another. People argued over everything, not always civilly. Not long ago, I received an e-mail from another member reading: "I'm starting to understand what conservatives don't like about liberals!" I took issue only with...
James Fallows Says that Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Company Are Not New Yorkers--and Are Not Really Americans
I would put it differently: I would say that they are not who America should be--that if we are anything, it is not another bunch of angry bigoted blood-and-soil-and-our-god nationalists, but rather a City Upon a Hill, a Light Unto the Nations, an Errand Unto the Wilderness to demonstrate what humans can be. And Palin and Gingrich are definitely not into America's best self.
James Fallows:
This Is Not My Normal Beat (Bloomberg & Mosque Dept)...: ... but I have to say that all...
Department of "Huh?!"; or Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?
Clive Crook toadies to Republican Representative Paul Ryan:
More on Taxes: The charge that conservatives have no ideas on fiscal reform certainly does not apply to Paul Ryan. His Roadmap for America is nothing if not radical. It proposes a complete overhaul-in effect, the dismantling-of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. On the tax side, it slashes taxes on the wealthy and proposes a broad-based consumption tax. [Paul:] Ryan is a good thing, and his Roadmap is very interesting. He...
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