Archive for November, 2013

The Bond Market Won’t Allow An End To QE Any Time Soon

A couple of days ago I linked to this article which suggested that were Hayek alive today he might well counsel to proceed with caution in its use of unconventional policies, e.g. QE. The gist of the piece was that economists, indeed all social scientists, tend to certitude based on quantitative models which are anything […]

Fannie/Freddy Reform Nowhere In Sight

Since 2008, the mostly agreed upon date for the onset of the Great Recession, lots of responses to the crisis have occurred. Stimulus came and went, Dodd Frank passed, the Volker rule was enacted yet not to date implemented, the CFPB was let lose on the land, the Fed embarked on a continuing mission to […]

What Would Hayek Have Thought About QE?

No real comment to offer on this essay about what Hayek might have thought of QE. It’s just interesting reading, so I thought I would pass it along.

ObamaCare: Changing The Subject

This hardly seems to signal an abundance of optimism from the Obama administration. President Barack Obama plans to push back the second-year start of enrollment in Affordable Care Act health plans, a move that would let insurers adjust to growing pains in the overhaul and potentially stave off premium increases before the 2014 congressional elections. The enrollment […]

ObamaCare Going To The Dogs

A new Colorado enrollee in ObamaCare. Actually, it’s just a website snafu, understandable and pretty funny. I only posted this as an excuse to put up a dog picture. Hey, beats kittens!

ObamaCare’s Strange Bedfellows

Obamacare has what’s called a risk corridor. Basically, it’s a formula for making good losses insurance companies might incur if they misprice their policies or the insurance pools turn out not to match up properly with their models. The risk corridors assumed that some would make “excess” profits and some would suffer unanticipated losses. The […]

Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement – Freer Trade Or Stalking-Horse

I haven’t paid much attention to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, the mega-trade deal currently being negotiated among the US and a number of Asia Pacific countries. I’m generally a free trade advocate so I assumed that this amounted to a liberalization of trade terms among the group. Perhaps I was naive. This article from […]