Housing’s recovery petering out
Posted on March 5, 2010 at 8:26 am
Robert Shiller says there are “real clouds on the horizon” for the housing market and that the government programs set to expire this spring will likely have to be extended so that sentiment and spending can feel its way toward more normal levels.
It’s not just a question of a double dip. It’s a question about whether the economy can be vibrant for years to come.
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National view of health reform, industry dynamics
Posted on March 3, 2010 at 8:21 amThe American Hospital Association’s Rick Pollack will speak to Nashville Health Care Council members this evening, providing an update on health care reform and other important issues he says the health care industry needs to be prepared for “with our without” this legislation.
Among those issues, Pollack told NashvillePost.com, is an industry move away from the traditional fee-for-service model toward integrated payment systems that encourage coordination of care across provider settings.
“It’s the right direction that we need to move in because … it’s a more efficient way of providing care, because it aligns the financial incentives among all the players and is also a way to increase quality,” he said.
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The ersatz recovery
Posted on March 2, 2010 at 7:17 amMichael Pento says the Fed and the White House aren’t letting the economy deleverage like it should.
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Our stimulus becomes more transparent
Posted on February 18, 2010 at 9:02 am
Rep. Jim Cooper and his team have been busy working Google Maps. They’ve compiled and annotated all the Recovery Act cash — used among other things to study hydropower, monitor invasive plants and help the Symphony keep five part-time musicians — that has flowed in Tennessee 5th Congressional District.
‘Shades of the Carter-era quick fixes’
Posted on February 11, 2010 at 12:06 pmDavid Rosenberg is not impressed with what he calls Washington’s focus on short-term solutions.
First, it was a $165 billion of tax rebates in the spring of 2008. What did that accomplish? Not much. Then we had a ballyhooed $862 billion fiscal stimulus plan unveiled a year ago. What do we have to show for it? Just a couple of quarters of positive GDP growth, which again will offer very little in the way of sustainable multiplier impacts.
Now we have what can only be described as a tepid reaction to the jobs crisis with an $85 billion bill making its way through Congress with a most distinctly non-creative cornerstone of a $5,000 payroll tax credit that has shades of the Carter-era quick fixes written all over it.
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LBMC’s HITECH task force
Posted on at 7:57 amLattimore Black Morgan & Cain said yesterday it has formed a task force to help health care providers better understand the requirements of the HITECH Act of 2009, which provides reimbursement to hospitals and physicians who implement and adequately use electronic health records. LBMC said it will offer some free informational webcasts and presentations in addition to paid services.
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Nissan back in black
Posted on February 9, 2010 at 12:12 pmNissan posted a fiscal-third-quarter operating profit of $1.5 billion as various stimulus plans helped get the auto sector back on the right track. The result easily topped analysts’ expectations and lifted full-year profits into positive territory. The auto maker’s New York-listed shares (Ticker: NSANY) are up about 7 percent.
We’re tiring of government solutions
Posted on at 11:24 amBelmont’s Jeff Cornwall says the fact that $15 billion earmarked for small-business financing hasn’t been touched shows two things: Public money is not the answer and, more importantly, the market can digest a lot of problems on its own.
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Stimulus grants for Vandy cancer researcher
Posted on January 29, 2010 at 7:22 amVanderbilt University Medical Center cancer investigator H. Charles Manning has received two grants, totaling $1.6 million, from the National Cancer Institute to study imaging techniques in colorectal cancer. The grants are part of the federal government’s stimulus package funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“The promise of molecular imaging is to rapidly and noninvasively interrogate tissues of interest without tissue sampling, such as biopsy,” said Manning. “Molecular imaging biomarkers … may enable us to determine whether a drug is working as early as a few hours after administration as well as predict whether patients will continue to respond over time. This information could spare patients the expense and potential side effects of ineffective therapies.”
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$9,400,000,000,000
Posted on January 27, 2010 at 10:49 am
Barry Ritholtz passes along an eye-catching graphic from the Harvard Business Review that shows, among other things, that only China and Saudi Arabia have on a relative basis pumped more stimulus into their economies than the United States.
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If Congress wants to create jobs, it needs to move quickly
Posted on at 10:27 amBrad DeLong says efforts to have the economy create jobs on its own haven’t worked. Looking to the mid-term elections, lawmakers have a few options left to improve the employment picture.
There is still time for a substantial shift in federal spending toward high-employment (but in all likelihood low-value) projects to reduce unemployment before the end of 2010 – if Congress acts quickly. And there is still time for a substantial temporary and incremental new-hire tax credit aimed at getting businesses to boost employment before the end of 2010.
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‘The stars could be aligning’
Posted on January 25, 2010 at 8:14 am
Kathryn Thompson at West End-based TRG writes that the jobs stimulus bill being hammered out now is almost guaranteed to include a big chunk of cash for infrastructure spending that will allow states to better plan and staff for longer-term projects.
What is different now is the political will to do something about unemployment…even if it comes as a self-serving re-election strategy. [...] Fortunately for the construction industry, the Democratic party believes in only one formula for stimulating the economy, government spending programs. We expect to see more of it, and soon, in one form or the other. Ultimately, that will play out well for our building materials, E&C, and heavy equipment coverage universe.
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Green job push ‘recipe for mass poverty’
Posted on January 19, 2010 at 9:56 am
Gerard Jackson at Safe Haven says the Obama administration’s push to fund environment-minded jobs is misguided because it will create a more labor-intensive economy and depress wages and productivity.
Now there is absolutely no way under the sun that these green energy jobs could ever match the productivity of power stations. And no matter how many tantrums greenies throw nothing will change that fact.
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Time to go cold turkey
Posted on December 29, 2009 at 7:29 amEven though many of the government stimulus programs have yet to truly kick into gear, Fabius Maximus says we ought to already be weaning ourselves off the financial heroin.
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Careful with those billions
Posted on December 11, 2009 at 11:38 amBruce Bartlett writes in Forbes that we need to think long and hard about funding any more stimulus programs. After all, history tells us we’re likely too late to really make a difference.
What should be avoided, however, are large-scale stimulus programs that cannot be justified on their own merits but only as the response to an emergency situation. That is especially true if the administration wants to use unspent funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to fund additional stimulus without going through the normal appropriations process. It’s wrong to use such funds as “found money” that needs to be spent quickly lest it burn a hole in the government’s pocket.
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