WhyTheHeck

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 [...]

Government sanctioned home ownership, while encouraging paying off mortgages.

One way to significantly impact overall costs is to insist on ‘broker’ fee transparency. The brokers fees can be as high as 15% (they are often less) of the fees paid to the insurance company and are often not identified to the buying employer. Brokers have on occasion caused the buying employer to spend more [...]

Pharmaceutical costs in the United States has been rising significantly in recent years (other than 2008) at a rate higher than inflation. A portion of these costs are due to price increases, but a significant portion is due to the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to increase market [...]

Many commentators have lamented the fact that people did not spend their stimulus checks in 2008, but saved them instead. Obviously, the “stimulus” only works if people spend it. Recent examples of those commentators would be Bruce Bartlett (New York Times 12/24/08), Ed Glaeser (Boston Globe 1/5/09), and Scott Lehigh (Boston Globe 1/9/09). No one has suggested the solution proposed below, which would hugely incentivize spending a tax cut or stimulus check, while at the same time providing a windfall to consumers at no additional cost to the government. So to those commentators and everyone else, we offer the following lesson in the new field of “stimulus economics.”