Dean Baker

The Post’s front page article on the second quarter GDP numbers tells readers: “There are some big ifs attached to that forecast, however, with the biggest being the fragile American consumer. For a sustained recovery to kick in, expanding production by businesses will need to result in a more steady job market and greater consumer […]

Suppose back in the days of the Soviet Union a young man in Moscow was fined $600,000 for selling blue jeans on the black market. Would the news media just report the sentence and discuss whether or not the convict was repentant? Possibly, but my guess is that the article would comment on how the […]

WSJ reporter told his blog readers that: “stimulus can’t take credit for slower GDP contraction.” His argument is that most of the growth in spending at the federal level came from higher defense spending, which is not part of the stimulus. This is true, but hugely misleading. The stimulus was directed primarily at state and […]

The Post is acting like a newspaper this morning. Here’s a front page story on the money that the Blue Dogs get from the health care industry. –Dean Baker

The Post has a good front page article that reports on the frequent use of costly scanning equipment by doctors who get high reimbursements from insurers or Medicare. There is an obvious problem of incentives here. Once the doctor owns the scanner, he has an incentive to use it as much as possible in order […]

For years the media liked to tout the fact that Europe had a higher unemployment rate than the United States. This was routinely presented as evidence that Europe’s more generous welfare states and strong labor movements were outmoded in a modern economy. This story lost credibility as the unemployment rates have converged over the last […]

This time the problem child is South Korea, which the Post tells us will have the oldest population on the planet by 2050. They may not have enough people to work as valet parkers at restaurants or the mid-night shift at convenience stores. This sounds very scary. Just imagine, a low unemployment rate and high […]

NPR interviewed PhRMA CEO and former congressman Billy Tauzin this morning. Mr. Tauzin told listeners that drugs are just 8 percent of the country’s health care expenditures. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Research, prescription drugs account for almost 10 percent ($244.8 billion out of $2509.9 billion) of spending. It would have been […]

When China bought dollars in the early part of this decade it lost large amounts of money compared with alternative investments, like euro denominated bonds. Were the Chinese upset about their large losses? I don’t know, but they certainly never publicly complained. Their dollar investments did prop up the dollar against the yuan, supporting China’s […]

In its top of the hour news segment on Morning Edition Mora Liasson reported the results of a new poll showing dwindling support for President Obama’s health care plan. Ms. Liasson noted pollster Stan Greenberg’s assessment that people had heard about the program’s “huge” $1 trillion price tag, but had not heard about the benefits […]