6 October 2023
This editorial is bonkers. It criticizes Kaiser for controlling medical costs … and tries to use the Kaiser experience as just another reason why ‘single-payer’ does not work.
Single-payer healthcare only works until the reality of rationing bites.
Have they tried to get a referral from United Healthcare lately? Traditional healthcare insurance rations to preserve profits. Business rations resources to make their numbers. Which principle is WSJ applying?
If you thought local news was dead, this opinion piece argues otherwise. Whether this evidence indicates a trend is debatable. However, local news is important for the future of our republic.
I had just finished reading a Bloomberg Headline Story noting that their economists were predicting 160,000 new Jobs in September – a slow down in jobs production. Just as I finished, the numbers were released – 336,000 new jobs.
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Scientific American article discusses the energy requirements for AI via an interview of Alex de Cries, a data scientist and Ph.D. candidate studying the energy costs of emerging technologies. He suggests that sustainability of AI should be included as a risk factor for AI developments. Data centers, whether or not AI is hosted by them,…
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Intel is not making delivery commitments for new supercomputer at Argonne. Energy Department has 10 companies engaged in a research center focused on quantum computing. Jesus pointed out that power corrupts – remember the temptations? OpEd written by former Liberty student notes how power is taught to be valued at Liberty, as she acknowledges: None of…
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That is what Alan Greenspan thinks: But Mr. Greenspan, who was first appointed by President Ronald Reagan, placed far more blame on the Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities. Global demand for the securities was so high, he said, that Wall Street companies pressuredlenders to lower…
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Greenspan admits he has found a flaw in the theory many believe to be immutable law: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said. Referring to…
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NYT continues to ask questions about who knew what when In an hourlong interview with The New York Times, Mr. Paulson defended Treasury’s actions, saying that he and his aides had done everything they could, given the deep-rooted problems of financial excess that had built up over the past decade. “I could have seen the…
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NYT piece confirms the ubiquitous nature of the GS machine present within government: Indeed, Goldman’s presence in the department and around the federal response to the financial crisis is so ubiquitous that other bankers and competitors have given the star-studded firm a new nickname: Government Sachs.
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From the category of “don’t take your discipline so seriously”: The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. John Kenneth Galbraith US (Canadian-born) administrator & economist (1908 – 2006) [Taken from QuotationsPage.Com]
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Just some thoughts that need expanding: The collapse of the financial systems provides demonstrations of how the assymetry of information can undermine the foundation of a sound, efficient market system. Evidence of adverse selection (principal lacks sufficient information to select the best agent) and moral hazard (principal lacks information necessary to understand whether the agent…
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WSJ economists have now uttered the R word: This is the first time that survey forecasts for those periods have turned negative. If those predictions bear out, it would mark the first time U.S. GDP—the total value of goods and services produced—has contracted for three consecutive quarters in more than a half century. Economists put…
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Bernanke, using history of the Great Depression, opines: Finally, Mr. Bernanke, who is an authority on the Great Depression, said that the country and its federal officials had learned from history that inaction or delayed reaction to financial calamity could be disastrous. “This is not the situation we face today,” he said, predicting that official…
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From Congressional testimony excerpted in the NYT: AIG says the rules forcing information into the market regarding debts caused their downfall: In his testimony, Mr. Willumstad attributed the company’s failure largely to mark-to-market accounting rules that forced A.I.G. to recognize tens of billions of dollars in accounting losses, as well as a “tsunami” of market…
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Review in the Chronicle discusses whether the current financial crisis causes one to consider whether economics is taught well. Here are a couple of interesting quotes: At some point, and this is as good as any, we have to ask ourselves if we have been teaching theory or ideology. What about a return to the…
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