Larry Summers Redefines Balanced Budgets as Stimulus and Big Deficits as Austerity
Alan Reynolds
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in June 4 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, offers a scatter diagram which allegedly shows “that countries that pursued harsher austerity policies in recent years also had lower real GDP growth.” He acknowledges, but does not adequately explain, that the causality may well be backwards: Bond markets would not allow countries in severe economic distress (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to continue financing deficits at the peak levels of 2010.
Summers defines “austerity” as the three-year change (regardless of the level) from 2010 to 201...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 10, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Imaginary Squabbles Part 3: Krugman and DeLong’s Changing Theories and Missing Facts
Alan Reynolds
Responding to a student question after a recent Kansas State debate with Brad DeLong I posed a conceptual puzzle. I asked students to ponder why textbooks treat Treasury sales of government bonds as a “stimulus” to demand (nominal GDP) in the same sense as Federal Reserve purchases of such bonds. “Those are very different polices,” I noted; “Why should they have the same effect?”
The remark was intended to encourage students to probe more deeply into what such metaphors as “stimulating” or “jump starting” really mean, not to accept as dogma that fiscal and monetary poli...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 24, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Imaginary Squabbles Part 2: Krugman and DeLong on Ireland
Alan Reynolds
A short 2010 article of mine in Politico, which still annoys Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, dealt with Ireland’s brief effort to restrain spending, which (while it lasted) was smarter than imposing uncompetitive tax rates as Greece had done.
Krugman ridiculed my Politico article in at least four columns. He imagines I predicted a “boom” in Ireland, because I wrote in June 2010 that, “the Irish economy is showing encouraging signs of recovery.” That the Irish economy was turning up at the time is undeniable. Although I did not yet have the benefit of real GDP data, Ireland’s GDP w...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 23, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Scientists Discover a Key Mechanism for the Most Common Form of Alzheimer’s Disease
Scientists have discovered that a network of genes involved in the inflammatory response in the brain is a crucial mechanism driving Late Onset Alzheimer's Disease (LOAD)
+Alzheimer's Reading Room
The findings, published online in the journal Cell, provide new understanding of key pathways and genes involved in LOAD and valuable insights to develop potential therapies for the disease.
To date, scientists have been challenged in understanding LOAD, the most common form of AD.
Despite decades of intensive research, the causal chain of mechanisms behind LOAD has remained elusive.
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Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - April 27, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs
Same-Sex Marriage: Is It Ethical?
Discussion Blog)
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - March 29, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Dying For Caffeine
It’s not the coffee, it’s everything else.
Late last year, coffee drinkers were buoyed by the release of a massive study in the New England Journal of Medicine that “did not support a positive association between coffee drinking and mortality.” In fact, the analysis by Neal D. Freedman and associates showed that even at the level of 6 or more cups per day, coffee consumption appeared to be mildly protective against diabetes, stroke, and death due to inflammatory diseases. Men who drank that much coffee had a 10% lower risk of death, and women in this category show a 15% lower death risk. Coffee, it seemed, was goo...
Source: Addiction Inbox - March 13, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
How to design a street that's mentally rejuvenating
More people worldwide now live in cities than in the countryside. Combined with sprawl and the loss of urban green spaces, this means that many of us are unable to enjoy the restorative effects of a natural setting. But what's to say the built environment, designed well, can't have a rejuvenating effect too? "The built environment can be more beautiful than nature," the British planning minister said recently, "and we shouldn’t obsess about the fact that the only landscapes that are beautiful are open — sometimes buildings are better."
What's clear is we need more research on the psychological effects of urban design....
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christian Jarrett Source Type: blogs
Matthew Yglesias Thinks Doctors are the Problem
The liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias' take on the Steven Brill's health care crisis tome is a strange one. Rather than focus on Brill's substantive points about the medical-industrial complex, he elects to point out the one facet of health care spending that Brill downplays; i.e. doctor compensation. Yglesias, from the Gawandean school of Avaricious Physicians, apparently, feels that we need to crack down even harder on physician reimbursements. After all, doctors in the United States earn more than doctors anywhere else in the world. To back such a claim he cites this chart from the OECD:
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Source: Buckeye Surgeon - March 2, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD Source Type: blogs
On the Fence
My brother wrote and sent the following out to some friends via email. I’m re-posting with his permission. For the record, he’s brilliant and not overly political. This was originally sent on Sept 6, 2012.
+++++++++
I never do this (hit reply to all) but, in this instance, I can’t resist.
First off, the facts about the federal budget. As you can see from the attached spreadsheet (provided courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget), federal tax receipts have averaged 17.8% of GDP from 1950 – 2011. Yes it has fluctuated from a high of 20.6% to the recent lows of 15.1% (the effect of the stim...
Source: Surgical Diversions - January 20, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Andy Fragen Tags: life-unscripted economy Source Type: blogs
On the Fence
My brother wrote and sent the following out to some friends via email. I’m re-posting with his permission. For the record, he’s brilliant and not overly political. This was originally sent on Sept 6, 2012.
+++++++++
I never do this (hit reply to all) but, in this instance, I can’t resist.
First off, the facts about the federal budget. As you can see from the attached spreadsheet (provided courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget), federal tax receipts have averaged 17.8% of GDP from 1950 – 2011. Yes it has fluctuated from a high of 20.6% to the recent lows of 15.1% (the effect of the stim...
Source: Surgical Diversions - January 20, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Andy Fragen Tags: life-unscripted economy Source Type: blogs
The biggest Alzheimer Disease discovery in 2012
Kári StefánssonPerhaps the biggest discovery in the Alzheimer research world last year was the identification of a mutation in APP that significantly decreases its cleavage by β-secretase, leading to 40% less production of amyloidogenic peptides in vitro. The researchers found the mutation (A673T) in the APP gene protects against Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline in the elderly without Alzheimer’s disease.Future drugs that can recreate this Aβ-reducing effect “should perhaps be given not only to people at risk of Alzheimer’s but to all elderly people,” says Kári Stefánsson, senior investigator of ...
Source: neuropathology blog - January 4, 2013 Category: Pathologists Tags: Alzheimer's disease Source Type: blogs
