The Fed's LCR Reserve Requirement: An Ace up Its Floor-System Defense Sleeve
Among many other advantages it enjoys when it comes to influencing the course of monetary reform, the Fed has that of being able to shift the constraints that determine whether a proposed reform is or isn ’t possible. If existing constraints don’t stand in the way of some reform Fed officials would rather not see happen, they can always put up a new one, tailor-made for the purpose.The Fed seems prepared to do just that as part of its campaign to keep the “floor” system of monetary control it set-up in October 2008 around for good. Considering the floor system’s many disadvantages compared to a “corridor” sys...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 20, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Martin Feldstein vs. Fed Chairman Powell and Irving Fisher
In a November 27Wall Street Journal article,“Raise Rates Today to Fight a Recession Tomorrow,” Martin Feldstein reminded us he has been repeatedly cheerleading since 2013 for the Fed to raise interest rates faster and higher “to prevent the overvaluation of assets” whose prices “will collapse when long-term interest rates rise.” Icritiqued one of Feldstein ’s similar articles in 2017.November 27 was an odd time to be fretting about overvaluation. The day before Mr. Feldstein ’s article appeared, a headline in the same newspaper – “Stocks, Bonds Face Year in Red” – observed that “stocks, bonds and ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 11, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Martin Feldstein vs./ Fed Chairman Powell and Irving Fisher
In a November 27Wall Street Journal article,“Raise Rates Today to Fight a Recession Tomorrow,” Martin Feldstein reminded us he has been repeatedly cheerleading since 2013 for the Fed to raise interest rates faster and higher “to prevent the overvaluation of assets” whose prices “will collapse when long-term interest rates rise.” Icritiqued one of Feldstein ’s similar articles in 2017.November 27 was an odd time to be fretting about overvaluation. The day before Mr. Feldstein ’s article appeared, a headline in the same newspaper – “Stocks, Bonds Face Year in Red” – observed that “stocks, bonds and ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 11, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
The 1990 Bush " Tax Increase " Reduced Taxes
The late President G.H.W. Bush famously reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge and signed the “Bush tax increase” on November 5, 1990, to take effect the following January. The new law was intended to raise more revenue from high-income households and unincorporated businesses. It was supposed to raise revenue partly by raising the top tax r ate from 28% to 31% but more importantly by phasing-out deductions and personal exemptions as income on a joint return climbed above $150,00 (the phase-outs were calledthe PEP and Pease provisions). Treasury estimates expected revenues after the 1990 budget deal to be...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 10, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Should the Fed Raise Rates Now to Combat Future Recessions?
Many macreconomists believe that the Fed needs to keep raising rates now so it can lower them in future to combat a recession. See, for example, my colleague Martin Feldstein’s recentop-ed in the WSJ.I have always been puzzled by this argument; it seems to assume an asymmetry in the effects of raising versus lowering rates. Specifically, if raising rates now will hurt the economy just as much as lowering them later will help, why is the net effect beneficial? To a first approximation, one might expect a symmetric effect, which makes the standard case for higher rates now unconvincing. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 1, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron Source Type: blogs
Holiday Stress: 5 Tips to Manage It This Year
It seems like the holiday season starts earlier and earlier every year. Once September hits the aisles throughout stores become an odd mix of decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all at once. Then November 1st rolls around and homes become a mix of pilgrims and pumpkin spice with Christmas trees and “Jingle Bells”.
Along with the decorations, there seems to come an expectation that everyone should be happy and overjoyed during the holidays. But, for many, this isn’t the case because “the most wonderful time of the year” brings with it a lot of holiday stress. If this is y...
Source: World of Psychology - November 19, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Julie K. Jones, Ph.D., LPC Tags: Holiday Coping Mindfulness Money and Financial Self-Help Christmas Family Gathering Hannukah Holiday Stress Thanksgiving Source Type: blogs
The British are unafraid to talk about rationing. That ’s something to admire.
I am a huge fan of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), but probably not for the reasons many people might assume. It’s not because it’s “socialist” (a horribly inaccurate description), or that it’s nationalized, or anything like that. I’m a huge fan because somehow the people of Britain have developed the courage to talk about health care using very adult language. In the U.S., we can rarely progress beyond the equivalent of screaming toddler fits.
The British economy took a larger hit from the recession of 2008-9 than much of the rest of the world. Irrational exuberance apparently crossed the Atlantic a...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 23, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/richard-young" rel="tag" > Richard Young, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Public Health & Washington Watch Source Type: blogs
Why Federal Debt Is Damaging
The U.S. Treasuryreports that the federal budget deficit was $779 billion in fiscal 2018. The deficit is caused by spending in excess of tax revenues and is financed by borrowing from foreign and domestic creditors.Federal spending in 2018 was $4,108 billion and tax revenues were $3,329 billion, so Congress financed 19 percent of its spending with borrowing. Did taxpayers —who will ultimately bear the burden—really consent to that extra debt-financed spending? It is like Dad leaving the kids some cash to buy pizza, and then coming home to find that they also used his credit card to rack up charges on the Internet.Unles...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 17, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
Ethanol Politics Trump Common Sense
The federal government imposes a mandate to blend corn ethanol and other biofuels into the nation ’s gasoline. This “renewable fuel standard” or RFS produces a range of negative effects, as discussed inthis study at DownsizingGovernment.The “10% Ethanol” sticker you see at the gas station indicates that the government is subverting your free choice and raising your driving costs to benefit corn farmers. The government has decided that corn farmers are more important than you are.President Trump has supported the ethanol mandate, and he recently acted to increase the harm by allowing greater use of a 15 percent et...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 15, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
Everything You Need to Know About Net or Gross Saving Rates
Writing inProject Syndicate,Stephen Roach, former chief economist for Morgan Stanley, declares the U.S. economy ’s foundations fundamentally unsound:“America’s net national savings rate – the sum of saving by businesses, households and the government sector – stood at just 2.1% of [gross] national income in the third quarter of 2017. That is only one third of the 6.3% of the average that prevailed in the final three decades of the twen tieth century… America… is saving next to nothing. Alas, the story doesn’t end there. To finance consumption and growth, the U.S. borrows surplus saving from abroad to co...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 12, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Researchers find the most plausible cause of wellbeing decline in youth is increased screen time
A new paper analyses wellbeing and lifestyle data from over a million US youth
By Alex Fradera
Have young people never had it so good, or do they face more challenges than any generation? Our current era in the West is one of high wealth and relatively free of deprivation, meaning minors enjoy material benefits and legal protections that would be the envy of those living in the past. But there is an increasing suspicion that all is not well for our youth, and one of the most popular explanations, among some experts and the popular media, is that excessive “screen time” is to blame (all the attention young people devot...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 2, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Mental health Technology Source Type: blogs
Fierce Urgency of Now: Family Caregivers and the Future That Is Upon Us
Just before Mother’s Day, I was a guest on an Al-Jazeera news segment focused on the challenges of aging in America. It was my first-ever news appearance, and, later, I proudly showed a recording to my adult daughters when they came by to visit. The segment included a look at how elders are navigating the shoals of old age, sickness, and financial insecurity—a future millions of face, and all of us deny.
One segment featured a mid-life African American woman who had abandoned her retirement dreams to care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s. As the woman fixed her mother’s wisps of hair, both daughters turned to me...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - September 25, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Perspective: There ’s no epidemic of anxiety disorders among teenagers
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The Big Myth About Teenage Anxiety (The New York Times):
“We hear a lot these days that modern digital technology is rewiring the brains of our teenagers, making them anxious, worried and unable to focus.
Don’t panic; things are really not this dire.
Despite news reports to the contrary, there is little evidence of an epidemic of anxiety disorders in teenagers … Some would argue that young people today are more worried because the world is now in a more parlous state, what with intense competition for college and the lingering effects of the Great Recession, among other factors. Sure, but then that anxiety ...
Source: SharpBrains - September 7, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Education & Lifelong Learning Source Type: blogs
Fractional Reserve Banking and " Austrian " Business Cycles, Part II
At the end of my first post in this series, I observed that assessing the claim that fractional reserve banking causes business cycles meant asking two questions: first, “To what extent have historical money-fueled booms been associated, not with growth in the supply of either commodity money or central-bank supplied bank reserves, but with declining banking system reserve ratios?” and, second, “When a banking system does manage to operate on a lower reserve r atio, does its doing so necessarily contribute to an unsustainable boom?” I answer the first question here, leaving the second to a third and final install...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 21, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Cats & Dogs: Can We Find Unity on Health Care IT Change?
By MATTHEW HOLT
Today we have a humming economy and insane politics. In early 2009 we were in economic meltdown and were about one week into the sanest, soberist Administration and even Congress over many recent decades. In February 2009 They passed a stimulus bill that had a huge impact on the health IT market (and still does). At that time there was much debate on THCB about what the future of health IT policy should look like and how the stimulus “Meaningful Use” money should be spent. My January 2009 summary of that whole debate introduced the notion of “Cats and Dogs in health IT”. They’...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 15, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt 2008 Election EHR Health 2.0 Policy Policy/Politics RHIOs Startups Source Type: blogs
