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source This is good news, though it comes too late to be of much use. Stein is a professor of financial economics and works at the intersection of monetary policy, stock prices, and banking. He's an extremely good choice for the Fed at this juncture and would have been sorely appreciated...

I don't have an answer, but would love to get some discussion rolling. Currently some 43% of Federal government spending is in the form of "transfers" -- Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, UI, and other expenditures that directly transfer income from one individual to another. Furthermore...

So we know that the US pays way too much for healthcare, and we all have ideas about how to fix it. This is a post about the distribution of that healthcare spending. Are we spending too much on inpatient care? Outpatient care? Maybe it's all about administration and paperwork, and if we just...

We have a thread about smartphones and apps, so why not one on computers and programs? Computers Laptop: Thinkpad X201. 2.54 GHz processor (i5 540m), 4GB RAM, 160GB HDD, running Linux Mint. Desktop: 3.0 GHz processor (Phenom II X4), 4GB RAM, Radeon 4870 video card, 1.5TB HDD, running Windows...

Last fall I had the impression that Republican candidates were running through a queue, with each one getting their turn in the "I'm-not-Romney" spotlight. Turns out, this intuition has some validity. Here are Google Search statistics for each Republican candidate: Bachmann: Cain...

BLS Employment report: - Official unemployment rate fell 0.2% to 8.3% - Number of employed rose by 243,000 - Broad unemployment rate (which includes discouraged workers) declined slightly, from 15.2% to 15.1% - there was virtually no decline in the labor force, so importantly the unemployment...

XW0JTcYeKXg Discussion: What do you think about Colbert's SuperPAC? A force for good in political discourse, raising awareness of the consequences of Citizen's United? Unmitigated rabble? The distractions of a bored comedian? Something in-between? And will he run for President of the...

No surprise, but worth the mention. source Any Paul fans want to justify this? I mean, the science and statistical services are two of the parts of the government that work reasonably well...

What does it take to earn $14 billion in profits and still pay zero corporate income tax? Only the best tax accounting team money can buy. Ideally I'd like this thread to be less about the level of taxation (omg GE didn't pay any taxes!11!!11) and more about the method by which they reduced...

This is a service post and a service thread. I'm only going to do this once. We have seen claims that the Federal Reserve has extended enormous sums of money -- $9 trillion, $47 trillion, $100 trillion -- in "bailouts" to financial institutions over the past three years. Consider the...

Is contagion spreading? Source: FT

Full text: I'd like to open this thread for the discussion of the declaration's tentative principles. My own initial thoughts:

I'm shamelessly ripping this from a blog I read. I'd love to get reactions from both fundamentalist and mainline Christians. :) source Personally, I'm not committed to the literal historicity of the first, say, 11 chapters of Genesis; they read an awful lot like other Ancient Near Eastern...

BLS report Relevant excerpt: In addition, GDP growth last quarter was revised downwards from 1.3% (already really bad) to 1.0% (even worse). Bottom line: the economy's not getting any better. The hole in GDP: This is why we need QE3 and a jobs program.

1 in 10 1 in 9 1 in 7 And now, 1 in 6: Despite GDP numbers, the recession is not over yet... (source) (Source data) And the average food stamp allotment remains at $133 per person per month.

Okay, so there is a sizeable contingent of OT in Chicago this summer. I'm visiting the city for three days, July 14 through 16 and would like to see if we can gather interest for a little meetup Friday, July 15 sometime in the early eveningish. Heck, it's worth trying. Who's with me...

I have both serious responses (tm) and PM's to answer, but both of those can wait. The American (and Western more generally) experience, over the past 140-odd years, has been temporary recessions that are followed by recoveries that restore income levels to their long-run trend values. As...

Part of a continuing series. Source Should we be handing out more food stamps? Fewer? Should the monthly allotment rise, given how long the recession has been prolonged? The average food stamp payment is about $133 per month per recipient. What Is To Be Done?

link Further, link A couple of points: 1) I'm not crazy. I've been pushing for more Fed stimulus and a strict price level target for some time, and now Christina Romer agrees with me. So nyah. :p 2) IMO, she's correct in her framing of the budget deficit problem. (a) The deficit is...