Dean Baker's Blog, page 74

NYT Does Some Mind Reading of Republican Members of Congress on Drug Pricing Policy

The NYT had a piece on how drug companies fear that if the Democrats retake the House, they make work together with Donald Trump to lower drug prices. At one point the piece tells readers;

"The Democrats’ proposal for the government to negotiate drug prices for millions of Medicare patients is their preferred solution. But it would also face the most opposition, from drug makers and Republicans who see it as a step toward price controls."

It's great we have NYT reporters who can read the mind...

The Not Very Scary World of C.L.O.s

We're still in financial crisis mania, as the business press eagerly tries to tell us how little they learned from the last crisis by trying to identify the source of the next one. The NYT's latest contribution to the effort is a piece on C.L.O.s, or collateralized loan obligations.

The piece tells us that these are like the C.D.O.s of the last decade, debt instruments in which banks bundled many loans of questionable quality and sold them off to unsuspecting buyers. It warns that banks have...

Yglesias Strikes Out in Attacking John Judis "Nationalism"

I don't especially want to defend nationalism, given the folks who wave this flag these days, but Matt Yglesias gets a few things wrong in criticizing John Judis' NYT piece earlier this week.

To start with he quotes Judis:

"As long as corporations are free to roam the globe in search of lower wages and taxes, and as long as the United States opens its borders to millions of unskilled immigrants, liberals will not able to create bountiful, equitable societies, where people are free from basic...

Washington Post Says that Protectionism for Its Friends is "Free Trade"

Yes, they are at it again. Expressing the usual journalistic need to waste words, the Post twice referred to trade deals that Donald Trump is attempting to negotiate as "free-trade" deals. While these deals are likely to reduce barriers in some areas (not for foreign physicians who want to practice in the US), they will almost certainly include longer and stronger patent and copyright protections.

We understand that the Post likes to see money going from the rest of us to Pfizer, Microsoft, a...

NYT Says Trump Commits Really Big Number to Foreign Aid

There are a lot of people who are so stupid that they think foreign aid is a major part of the federal budget. Ever wonder why people could be so stupid?

Well, the NYT tells us at least part of the reason in a news article on a new agency established by Donald Trump to provide loans and loan guarantees as a way to help developing countries and extend U.S. influence. The article tells us that the bill that established the new agency, the United States International Development Finance Corporat...

Scott Walker's Economic Record in Wisconsin: Nothing to Brag About

The New York Times had a piece on Scott Walker's campaign for reelection as governor of Wisconsin may have mistakenly given the impression that Wisconsin's economy had performed exceptionally well under Walker. It notes that the unemployment rate is currently 3.0 percent and that the average hourly wage has risen by 5.0 percent over the last year.

While these are both good numbers, a little context would be helpful. The current unemployment rate in neighboring Minnesota is 2.9 percent. M...

Lessons in Inequality #42,767: Why Don't GE's Directors Get Fired?

Roger Lowenstein has a very good piece in the Post about GE's hiring of a new CEO after the prior one served less than a year. According to Lowenstein, the new CEO's contract will give him incentives worth $300 million over the next four years if he does well by the shareholders. He will walk away with $75 million if he does poorly. This follows the hiring of an inept CEO who was dumped in less than a year and long-term CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars during h...

The Federal Reserve Board Is Not a Church #32,207

There is a popular line in elite DC circles that political figures are not supposed to talk about the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy. This was the theme of Catherine Rampell's Washington Post column in today's paper. The piece complained about Donald Trump's criticisms of the Fed's interest rate hikes and said that countries where monetary policy is controlled by politicians end up with hyperinflation.

While there is a list of countries where political control of the central bank has...

Corporate Debt Scares

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the peak of the financial crisis, news outlets continue to feature pieces how another one, possibly worse, is just around the corner. This mostly shows that the folks who control these oulets learned absolutely nothing from the last crisis. As I have pointed out endlessly, the story was the collapse of the housing bubble that had been driving the economy. The financial crisis was an entertaining side show.

There is one story in the coming crisis picture that...

Inflation Slows in September

The overall and core CPI both rose just 0.1 percent in September. Over the last last year, the increases in the two indexes have been 2.3 and 2.2 percent, respectively.The core index excluding shelter has risen just 1.4 percent over the last year.

Rather than accelerating, it appears that inflation is actually slowing slightly. The annualized rate of inflation in the core index comparing the last three months (July, August, September) with the prior three (April, May, June) is just 2.0 percen...