William Greider’s promoting an interesting idea about how to radically restructure the Federal Reserve. The crux of his idea comes from one of the least understood powers of the Federal reserve: it can essentially create money.
During the past year, the Fed has flooded the streets with money–distributing trillions of dollars to banks, financial [...]
Entries from July 2009
Greider’s Idea for Rebuilding the Federal Reserve
July 29th, 2009 · Comments Off
Tags: Finance
Research Note: Is Medicare “Government”?
July 29th, 2009 · Comments Off
A story like this seems to pop up about every decade. From the July 28 Washington Post:
At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is [...]
Tags: Health care · Model
Talking about Love, Justice and the Economy without Sounding like an Idiot
July 27th, 2009 · Comments Off
Speaking of the emotional map of a good economic model, this excerpt from a Bill Moyers round table discussion really struck me:
SERENE JONES [President of Union theological seminary]: You ask how you would define this crisis? I think it’s a crisis of value. We have misplaced, in deep ways, the ruler that [...]
Tags: Emotional Map of an Economy · Model
Conservative Healthcare Plans Are to Free Markets As BLTs Are to a Vegetarian Sandwich
July 23rd, 2009 · Comments Off
This weekend I heard a Republican politician on the radio arguing his health care plan was “pro-free market” and Obama’s was more “big government.” But his plan would stop insurance companies from being able to turn anyone away.
Okay people, let’s get real. It’s one thing to say you want to get the government out of [...]
Tags: Health care
Globalization Cuts Both Ways
July 20th, 2009 · Comments Off
In an aggressively global economy, do we really have any power anymore? If we try to change the rules in the US, won’t business just outsource everything to China?
Actually, according to BusinessWeek, Europe just showed us we’ve got a lot more power than you think. Europe’s in the middle of passing a bunch of new [...]
Tags: Checks and Balances · Global Economy
The Complicated Emotional Map of a Good Economic Model
July 17th, 2009 · Comments Off
In my last post, I complained Robert Kuttner didn’t really capture the government’s role in the market. Ironically, he also didn’t capture what I love about the market.
Kuttner, Dean Baker, Jamie Galbraith, they’ll all write that “markets accomplishments much superbly,” “the market is an incredibly powerful force,” etc. But they sound like a little [...]
Tags: Assumptions · Model
Research Stat: Wall Street Now 5 Times Bigger than in the 70s
July 17th, 2009 · Comments Off
Every once in a while I come across a stat that blows me away. I write it down on a scrap of paper, and I can’t find it again. So, since this blog is essentially a public journal, I’m going to start storing them here.
One of the reasons why the financial system can cause so [...]
Tags: Finance
How Finance Rules Are Designed to Burn Us
July 17th, 2009 · Comments Off
Krugman nicely sums up a big problem with the incentives players have in the financial ecosystem:
The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded [...]
Tags: Finance
Robert Kuttner And the Market/Government Problem
July 15th, 2009 · Comments Off
I’ve been reading Robert Kuttner’s The Squandering of America . Although it’s a very smart, nuanced analysis, the economic theory behind it has the same problem that a lot of folks on our side have when they talk about the relationship between the government and the market.
Here’s Kuttner’s theory in a nutshell:
Markets are useful [...]
Tags: Model
Affordable Healthcare for All, Now on Sale for Only 4% of Healthcare Spending
July 6th, 2009 · Comments Off
The next time someone tries to scare you about the cost of health care for all, here’s a nice stat from Krugman. The Congressional Budget Office just published an analysis of the Senate’s health care bill.
The budget office says that all this would cost $597 billion over the next decade. But that doesn’t include the [...]
Tags: Health care · Uncategorized
