Broback’s Blog

Given the recent SEC indictments, I couldn’t resist this passage from Krugman in July of 2008 (emphasis mine:) “But here’s the thing: Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco. In fact, Fannie and Freddie, after growing rapidly [...]

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Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw wrote about the students who walked out of his introductory econ class because “the biased nature of Economics 10 contributes to and symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America.” He hit upon a few points that I’ve been meaning to post about. I’ve wanted to go into detail how those with [...]

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Ouch. This would appear to handily refute the non-intuitive argument Krugman made (and bloggers parrot) about the imagined efficiency of Medicare and Medicaid. The New York Times reported yesterday: The official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for the last 17 months says that 20 percent to 30 percent of health spending is “waste” that [...]

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@mungowitz before: After:

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Robert Reich laments that workers can no longer purchase the goods they manufacture. “For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.” Seems to me like the iPad is a poster child for this [...]

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My friend Steve cites a smart, educated, and experienced friend who has sadly been affected by the economic downturn and has now been laid off. She’s been offered a job at a pay scale that’s apparently inconsistent with the residential real estate industry work she’s had in the past (lower) and with hours that are [...]

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Just ran across this 2007 report from the Treasury Department. Combine it with this from the Red Cross and World Bank data, and we get a picture of how Americans migrate (from a global perspective) between modes of lowly relative prosperity to the heights of lavish comfort. Key extracts below. (Emphasis mine) There was considerable [...]

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has created a revealing flow chart that perfectly captures a rant I’ve been making verbally for 20 years. I should probably print it out and carry it around with me it comes up so often. After looking at this, one might wonder why anyone invests at all.

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Goolsbee was on ABC’s “This Week” and pantomimed the European finance ministers who perpetually talk about taking action, but never do. The central example of inaction mentioned was that Greece has yet to lay off a single government employee. This example was put forth by conservative George Will (studied economics at Oxford), yet was refuted [...]

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Apparently you sell a lot more Touchpads at $99 than at $499. Gee, I guess individual downward-sloping demand curves aggregate into a similarly sloping curve after all. So weird. Someone notify Steve Keen.

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