Time magazine has done our nation a service by publishing Steven Brill’s long article on medical care costs. There isn’t much in the article that people who follow the issue closely didn’t already know piecemeal, but Brill puts things together…
Author: Ed Lotterman
Questions answered about federal budget cuts
The never ending brouhaha over federal fiscal issues has promoted readers to ask good questions. Three common ones are: — “When politicians claim ‘cuts’ are being made, are those actually reductions from what we are spending now or from mere…
Some simple answers are too simple
The advice that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” often attributed to Albert Einstein, should be heeded by economists. Deciding just where to draw that line between simple and too simple isn’t easy. Two issues…
Players in trade disputes often play both sides
If you want to succeed as the spokesperson for some industry group, the most important thing is that you have to lose all sense of shame immediately. That may be harsh, but it is the reaction I had on reading…
Money supply-inflation dynamic trickier than thought
The idea that inflation must result if a money supply grows faster than the real economy over a sustained period is accepted as a general rule by most economists. While this did not originate with Milton Friedman, his articulate evangelism…
Why the feds are going after Standard & Poors
The Justice Department’s recent action against Standard & Poors over that firm’s ratings of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the 2007 economic debacle is causing some controversy. Sundry commentators — wondering if the action is payback for S&P’s downgrade…
Rising meat prices illustrate economic principles
Beef prices are rising so sharply that it’s possible McDonalds will be forced to remove its popular McDouble from the Dollar Menu. The item’s high beef content makes the ratio of ingredient cost vs. price less favorable than for other…
Wall Street power deters effective reform
Where are the snows of yesteryear? Or, for that matter, where are Kuhn Loeb, Dillon Read, Brown Brothers Harriman or any of the myriad investment banks that once were famous on Wall Street but no longer exist? Does it matter?…
Presidents’ impact on spending is misunderstood
People think presidents have a lot of power over the nation’s debt versus its economic growth. They should be looking at Congress. The U.S. national debt, compared with total national output of goods and services, or gross domestic product, fell…
Senators’ plan offers borderline efficiency
Immigration is one of those issues that just does not go away. So proposals recently made by an eight-member bipartisan group of senators are welcome. They generally are sensible, as far as they go. But some aspects of the initiative…