ThinkOOB

The federal government excels at throwing money at problems, no surprise given decades of practice.  They don’t need my help with that, which is why these posts always propose solving problems without throwing money at them. 
Today we tackle the “Tax Refund Anticipation Loan,” a total rip-off even as compared to the rest of the [...]

Congressional candidate Joe Malone, running as a Republican in the 10th CD in Massachusetts, is guest-posting a great idea proposing what can be done with school gyms when not in use.  Why not subcontract them to health clubs to sell memberships for evenings and weekends?   The times when kids are not using the gyms are exactly the times [...]

I am going to take time out from postings that include the typical stuff that makes economics such a turn-off for most people, like equations, numbers, and facts.  And instead get right to the point about why our standard of living has fallen.
You were probably brought up being told that we were the richest country [...]

President Obama’s State of the Union speech proposed ways to help the middle class recover and also to create some jobs.   Naturally — and despite a proposed spending freeze – these initiatives will cost money.   He overlooked four initiatives that can also help the middle class, and  create jobs either directly or indirectly, but without costing anybody anything.
First, why [...]

The myth of the landlord as a Mr. Potter-type figure still persists, even though many of them today are as cash-strapped as the tenants.   That is the only rational explanation for why many building owners fail to make obvious energy-saving improvements in their buildings, improvements that have paybacks of 4 years or less and add to [...]

President Obama has often said that it would be a shame to waste this economic crisis.  Nowhere is that more true than in real estate, where federal homebuyer tax credits up to $8,000 are barely denting the mortgage foreclosure rate.   Instead, let’s use this crisis to try a new approach:   slashing the 6 percent real [...]

Dear OOBonomics nation,
 
There is a lot of debate about the implications of health care policy.  It’s a pleasure to join you today and hopefully to provide you with a brief overview of certain aspects of healthcare spending – this is not intended to be an in-depth analysis but it should  cover some of the major [...]

Dear Oobonomics Nation:
 
Whether you are pro-choice and disagree with the above headline, or pro-life and disagree with Roe v. Wade, please hold off on the hate-mail, okay?  Direct that towards people with bombs in their underwear instead.   (While you can’t send me hate-mail, you can still send me disagree-mail or even dislike-mail. )  What you are [...]

I just looked at Amazon.  The overall ranking for OOBonomics is no longer expressed in exponential notation.  More importantly, it ranks as the #84 release in the business book category.   This is quite a feat considering that (1) it is not a business book and (2) it hasn’t been released.
For those of you who aren’t [...]

I hate to be one of those I-told-you-so guys (not!) but way back in April I predicted a second round of stimulus, in 2010. I pointed that that the housing bubble was like heroin, and the first stimulus was like Methadone to prevent the economy from going “cold turkey” after the housing bubble burst.  (That [...]