Anyone seriously interested in controlling health care costs would be actively discussing alternatives to patent protection for financing the development of prescription drugs and medical equipment. Everyone who has taken even an intro economics class knows that there will be horrible waste and corruption when goods can sell for hundreds of times their competitive market price, as can be the case with prescription drugs and medical equipment. Those interested in controlling costs would also be actively seeking to promote international trade in medical services since the health care systems in other countries are so much more efficient than the U.S. system.

Morning Edition introduced an interview with George Soros by saying that the United States is still recovering from a financial meltdown. This is wrong. The reason that we have near double-digit unemployment is that we had an $8 trillion housing bubble that collapsed. The financial crisis was secondary.

This is best demonstrated by countries like Spain. Even though it has a relatively well-regulated financial system, and therefore did not have a financial crisis, its unemployment rate is 19 percent. Spain's problem was that it had a horrific housing bubble. It is not easy for an economy to recover from the distortions created by such asset bubbles.

NPR missed the bubble as it grew. It apparently still does not recognize what has happened to the economy.

Yep, the good news according to the headline of the USA Today article is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings in January were at their highest level since last February of 2009. That would be the month when the economy lost 726,000 jobs.

The numbers are going in the right direction -- it's good to see the number of job openings increase. And the number of layoffs and discharges fell to 1,890,000, the lowest level since April of 2008, a month when the economy shed 149,000 jobs. But we still have a long way to go before we are going to see healthy job growth. These numbers must be put in context.

--Dean Baker

In an article about the increasing number of people receiving long-term unemployment benefits the Post told readers that to have a labor force suited for the jobs of the future: "the Obama administration has tried to address that by investing heavily in education, clean energy and scientific research."
Actually, the Obama administration's investments in education almost certainly don't even offset the state and local cuts in spending forced by the recession. Its heavy investment in clean energy and scientific research is dwarfed by its spending on the war in Afghanistan.

--Dean Baker

I was one of the economists who thought the February jobs report was relatively good given the weather. Still, that was only compared with an expectation of a very bad report. The WSJ went a bit overboard with a headline: "Outlook Brightens for Jobless."

The NYT has a piece discussing efforts by Ford and GM to improve their quality. There is a chart accompanying the article showing the trend in complaints for the three automakers over the last decade. It shows a sharp drop in complaints by model year for both Ford and GM, while the numbers for Toyota remain almost flat.

The picture is somewhat distorted since it doesn't take account of sales. GM and Fords sales both fell by roughly one-third over this period, while Toyota's doubled. This means that Toyota also saw a sharp fall in complaints per vehicle, while the declines on a per vehicle basis for Ford and GM are not as steep as indicated by the graph.