Fiscal Dominance and Fed Complacency
ConclusionWhile Fed Governor Waller provides a strong case for Fed independence and for separating fiscal from monetary policy, his complacency about the risk of fiscal dominance ignores historical episodes of capturing the Fed for fiscal purposes during peacetime. In particular, since 2007 the Fed has moved closer to fiscal dominance by its i ntrusion into the fiscal space, using Section 13(3) emergency credit allocation and lending (e.g., housing finance, corporate debt, municipal bonds, and Main Street lending), and monetizing government debt. Moreover, with rising levels of debt to GDP, there is a plausible case tha...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 8, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: James A. Dorn Source Type: blogs
Jean Drouin, Clarify Health, on the new data stack.
By MATTHEW HOLT
Clarify Health has linked (but anonymized) data on about 300m Americans, including their claims, lab, (some) EMR data and their SDOH data. They then use it to help providers, plans and pharma figure out what is going on with their patients, and how their doctors et al are behaving. CEO Jean Drouin, a French-Canadian who incidentally at one point ran strategy for the NHS in London, explained to me what Clarify does, how it’s going to help improve health care, where these data products are going next–and why they needed to raise $116m in March to build it out. Jean thinks about creating a singl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 8, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Data Health Tech Clarify Health Health Data Jean Drouin Matthew Holt Source Type: blogs
How U.S. Trade Policy Helped Construction Materials Costs Go Through the Roof
Scott LincicomeTheWall Street Journalreports that skyrocketing construction material costs are inflating home prices, pressuring homebuyers and threatening the booming U.S. housing and construction industries:Lumber, one of the biggest costs in home-building after land and labor, has never been more expensive and is more than twice the typical price for this time of year. Crude oil, a starting point for paint, drain pipe, roof shingles and flooring, has shot up more than 80% since October. Copper, which carries water and electricity throughout houses, costs about a third more than it did in the autumn.Prices for granite, i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 18, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
Ron Paul and our Big, Fat Fed
George SelginRegular readers ofAlt-M don ' t need to be told that yours truly isno fan of the Fed ' s gigantic credit footprint. Even before the recent crisis, he lamented both the extent to which the Fed went from merelyregulating this nation ' s short-term money market tobeingits short-term money market, and the switch to an abundant reserve or" floor " operating system that made a bigger Fed footprint inevitable.By the time the Great Recession ended, the Fed ' s balance sheet was more than four times as large as it was in mid-2008. And now, thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, it has doubled in size yet again, to just shy of ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 15, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
By Supporters ’ Own Standards, the Steel Tariffs Haven’t Been “Effective”
Scott LincicomeIn an interview with MSNBC last Thursday, new Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondospoke highly of the " national security " tariffs that President Trump placed on steel and aluminum imports in 2018 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. According to Secretary Raimondo, " [t]he data show that those tariffs have been effective. " As my colleague Simon Lesternoted at the time, it ' s not entirely clear whether Raimondo ' s opinion was specific to China or the Section 232 tariffs more broadly, and she amplified the confusion by immediately following her remark with a note that the Biden administration...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 10, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
U.S. Accounts for 6% of Global Immigrant Population Growth, Down From 63% in 1995
David J. BierThe United States isthe top desired destination for immigrants around the world. The easy labor market rules make getting job or starting a businessmuch easier than most other countries. The cultural climate isones of the most accepting, and even if a specific place within U.S. borders doesn’t fit your preferences, the 50 states offer other markets, cultures, and climates that might. Yet despite these facts, a much larger share of immigrants are finding homes outside of America.From 1990 to 1995, the U.S. foreign ‐born population increased by 5.2 million, which accounted for 63 percent of the incre...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 9, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David J. Bier Source Type: blogs
The New Deal and Recovery, Part 11: The Roosevelt Recession, Continued
George Selgin" Massive jolts of New Deal spending had stopped the economic slide, [but the economy crashed again when] over two years, FDR slashed government spending 17 percent. " (From a 2011NPR presentation.)Inthe last installment of this series, I discussed the hypothesis that the 1937 collapse resulted from an ill-conceived tightening of monetary policy to which both the Fed and the Treasury contributed.While authorities differ in the degree of responsibility they assign to each, there ' s widespread agreement that, between them, instead of merely extinguishing a boom, as they intended to do, both Fed and Treasury off...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 2, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Sens. Romney and Cotton Propose Universal E ‐Verify and Minimum Wage Hike
Alex NowrastehSenators Romney (R-UT) and Cotton (R-AR)announced that they intend to introduce a bill to raise the national minimum wage and mandate E ‐Verify for all new hires in the United States. Immigration restrictionists have tried to useminimum wages to reduce immigration for more than a century. Combining a high minimum wage with E ‐Verify is not as surprising as it first seems. Restrictionists assume that higher minimum wages will increase unemployment for lower‐skilled workers,which it will, and that will mostly force lower skilled immigrant workers out of the country entirely.E ‐Veri...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 16, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
Will Biden Repeat Trump ’s Automotive Mistakes?
Scott LincicomeThe New York Times yesterday provided anin-depth look at the Biden White House ' s plans to " transform the economy " through " dramatic interventions to revive U.S. manufacturing " - heavy on economic nationalism, industrial planning, and manufacturing jobs. If that approach sounds familiar, it should: it ' s essentially the same gameplan that Biden ' s predecessor used, with the only major difference being Biden ' s emphasis on " green " industries like wind turbines, as compared to Trump ' s love of steel and other heavy industry.Both presidents, however, seem to share a soft spot for the automotive indus...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 12, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
How Is Biden ’s Covid Relief Bill like the Patriot Act?
David BoazPresident Biden seems determined to pass his “American Rescue Plan” without any Republican votes. It’s $1.9 trillion or bust, he says, on top of the unprecedented $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill from March and another $900 billion in December, some of which still hasn’t been spent. In fact, Republicans don’t have the clout to sto p the bill. But the plan is also drawing some sharp criticism from non‐Republican sources. Two big articles in the Washington Post Thursday and Friday urged that the plan be pared back to presumably necessary measures, with other components to be considered through the...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
The Pandemic Is Completely Changing the Way We Treat Unemployment
Unemployment insurance is the most important fiscal response the United States has during a recession, because it sends timely, targeted, and temporary financial assistance to those directly affected by the downturn. What the CARES Act created—remarkably high benefits for more workers—was a short-term experiment born of necessity, but it could have a lasting influence on public policy. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - February 1, 2021 Category: Health Management Authors: Kathryn A. Edwards Source Type: blogs
State Budgets: Course Correction Not Crisis
Chris EdwardsMedia reports since the pandemic began have claimed that state and local governments are in a “dire fiscal crisis” and face “the biggest cash crisis since the Great Depression. ” Such claims are exaggerated. State‐local tax revenuesdipped in the second quarter of 2020 but bounced back strongly in the third quarter.Unfortunately, the media scare stories prompted Congress to passvastly more aid for state and local governments than was lost in small tax revenue declines. In December, Congress provided state and local governments $54 billion for schools, $14 billion for transit, $10 billion for highwa...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 27, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
Being Wrong about China Then Matters Less Than Being Right about China Now
Daniel J. IkensonEver since the George H.W. Bush administration weighed its diplomatic options in those months of intense policy introspection following Tiananmen Square in 1989, I have supported the deepest possible engagement with China. Throughout the 1990s, along with many others working on trade issues, I participated in the perennial push to persuade Congress to grant China “Normal Trade Relations” status and, ultimately, to secure “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” designation, the last major hurdle to China’s joining the World Trade Organization.Throughout the two decades following China ’s 2001 WTO acc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 27, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel J. Ikenson Source Type: blogs
And You Thought Health Insurance Was Bad
By KIM BELLARD
I spend most of my time thinking about health care, but a recent The New York Times article – How the American Unemployment System Failed – by Eduardo Porter, caught my attention. I mean, when the U.S. healthcare system looks fair by comparison, you know things are bad.
Long story short: unemployment doesn’t help as many people as it should, for as much as it should, or for as long as it should.
It does kind of remind you of healthcare, doesn’t it?
The pandemic, and the associated recession, has unemployment in the news more than since the “Great Recession” of 2008 and per...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 27, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Health Policy Insurance Kim Bellard Unemployment Source Type: blogs
What ’s Going on with California’s Housing Market?
Michael D. TannerDespite a pandemic, recession, andunemployment at higher than 8%, the price of a home in California is reaching record levels, with the median San Francisco Bay Area home going for just short ofone million dollars. To Californians, this will come as little surprise, but it ’s worth putting it in context: according to theNational Association of Realtors, almost 58% percent of counties nationwide have median home prices less than $150,000. Paradoxically, home prices are nearing record highs, but rents are down from their pre ‐coronavirus peaks. While the pandemic‐induced economic condit...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 26, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Michael D. Tanner Source Type: blogs
