So far, energy costs have not been central either to the analysis of our current Great Recession or of the recovery now struggling to announce itself.

This article in London’s Guardian pushes the cost of oil back to center stage.  The news: the US government during the Bush administration (should we call it the Cheney-Bush administration?) apparently lobbied the International Energy Agency to underplay peak oil.  Result: IEA estimates show unlikely growth in oil production.  Note how much the forecast production relies on sources not yet known.

We’re not going to have to wait long.  As energy demand grows with economic recovery oil prices will climb, maybe into the stratosphere.

One more reason to expect an “L” of a recovery, one more reason for very cautious government budgets.

Update: study that chart for a minute.  Imagine what happens to us if the ‘not yets’ are not found.  We’re in for hard times soon.

Gloomy picture in the UK.  Expecting the 3rd quarter data to show a bit of growth signaling the technical end of the recession, the turnaround wasn’t there as noted by the Telegraph’s economics editor. This despite ‘quantitative easing’ (massive gov’t. spending) paralleling our huge stimulus efforts.  Here’s his chart.

London Times editors note that our economists are having a hard time forecasting — one more worry.

And click to continue to see a British comparison of this recession/depression with others since the 30s. Read the rest of this entry »

can I afford this?

Noted on the Truthout site, this McClatchey story reports a Consumers Union study of how people are cutting back on their health care costs.

The Consumers Union survey of 1,002 adults from Sept. 17 to 20 found that among the ways people have tried to cut back on health care costs:

• 28 percent put off doctors’ visits.
• 25 percent have been unable to afford medical bills or medication.
• 22 percent put off medical procedures.
• 20 percent declined medical tests.
• 20 percent skipped filling prescriptions.
• 15 percent took expired medication.
• 15 percent skipped scheduled dosages of prescriptions.

The problems were more prevalent among households with incomes of less than $50,000, in which about two-thirds said they’d cut back on health care because of costs. Even where income topped $100,000, however, about one-third made similar decisions.

Notice how the cutbacks are made by people way up the income scale.

And consider the implications: lowered overall public health, rising taxpayer costs in social safety net services when thoise cutbacks translate into increased sickness and job losses, lower productivity, etc.

The estimable Robert Fisk reports in the London Independent that a group of nations — the Arab oil-exporting states joined by China, France, Russia, Brazil and others — have been secretly talking about replacing the dollar with a basket of currencies for global oil trading.  OMG to the max for the US.

Fisk notes the ramifications of this self-protective move away from the volatility and declining value of the dollar not only are a blow to the already-reeling US economy but possibly portend increased US-China conflict.

The independent editorializes “the end of the dollar spells the rise of a new order.”

But the significance of this development goes much further. Since the end of the Second World War the dollar has been the bedrock of world trade. The pre-eminence of the American currency flowed naturally from the economic dominance of the US. Virtually everyone traded with America so it made sense to use their currency.

But the US is not the dominant power that it once was. The financial crisis has left it hobbled with significant government and household debts and sharply reduced prospects for growth. Developing nations such as China, Brazil and India, on the other hand, have weathered the economic storm significantly better. So while this latest proposal is born of financial calculation, it is also a reflection of a new economic world order.

Mark this day on your calendar.  If these folks succeed we’re in for another huge blow to our economy — a fundamental reset.  One more reason to get our financial house in order — most especially including health care reform — faster than asap.

Update: Here is the Washington Post following with a useful survey of the pressures on the dollar. This underscores how precarious is our situation.

For those of you wishing to hear from some experts, here is an excellent, 20 minute discussion online among three experienced researchers in health care economics. Note this is moderated by the now-famous Dr. Atul Gawande, Harvard surgeon and New Yorker author.

Click here.  Note that the discussion is sub-divided into 7 topical parts if you wish to skip around.

Definitely worth your time.

One picture tells it all.

This maps the main roots of our current political-economic woes.

Note the time line — this didn’t start with last year’s recession.  But the speed and the depth of this “worst since the Depression” downturn is directly related.

This is not just a map of poor wages.  It also shows how serious are our problems with education and health care and politics and energy policy.

PS — US national productivity shot UP again last week — and so did unemployment!

Credit: the chart is from this lecture, courtesy Prof. Juan Cole in his Informed Comment blog.

Writing in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors say the current health care reform bills do not do enough for cost control.  They propose an all-payer regulation strategy.  The full text of their short article is below the jump.  The spine of their argument:

Successful health care reform requires effective control of health care spending - without it, rising costs will continue to strain federal and state budgets, businesses, and families, jeopardizing gains in insurance coverage. The reform legislation now before Congress, however, cannot be relied on to control spending.

…

The missing link in reform legislation, then, is any mechanism with the potential for systemwide control of medical spending. One straightforward way to achieve that goal would be to adopt a single-payer plan - but that would displace the private insurance industry and remains politically infeasible.

There is, however, another option that could control spending across both the public and private insurance pools. Other countries that have multiple insurers, such as Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, use all-payer regulation to control costs. In these countries, insurers come together to negotiate, or the government takes the lead in setting, common payment rules for medical care. With a few exceptions, payments to all doctors in a given geographic area follow a standard fee schedule. Hospitals are also paid on comparable terms.

They see 4 advantages: lower overall costs, less cost shifting, simplicity, and successful coexistence of public and private plans — advantages which ought to appeal to business, citizens and the health care industry alike.   Good thinking, definitely worth considering.  Click below to read the whole article.

Read the rest of this entry »

Belgian economist Dr. Paul De Grauwe recently published an important article in the Financial Times.  His argument: classical macroeconomics is not working — it may be elegant and appealing, but we need to shift paradigms if we are to understand the modern economy and our policy choices. As the cartoon suggests, it is causing a real stir among economists.  Worth thinking about — especially now when we’re betting the farm (i.e. national economy) on health care reform.  I find his thinking quite persuasive.

I’ve included the full text below the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

2009 Olympic College grads -- we need more!

The President outlined some key next steps in our economic recovery in today’s Washington Post.

Here’s a most welcome role for community colleges:

And this week, I’ll be talking about how we give our workers the skills they need to compete for these jobs of the future. In an economy where jobs requiring at least an associate’s degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience, it’s never been more essential to continue education and training after high school. That’s why we’ve set a goal of leading the world in college degrees by 2020. Part of this goal will be met by helping Americans better afford a college education. But part of it will also be strengthening our network of community colleges.

And more on community colleges:

We believe it’s time to reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future. Our community colleges can serve as 21st-century job training centers, working with local businesses to help workers learn the skills they need to fill the jobs of the future. We can reallocate funding to help them modernize their facilities, increase the quality of online courses and ultimately meet the goal of graduating 5 million more Americans from community colleges by 2020.

This is great timing — I just sent out yesterday the invitation to House Democrats to meet to discuss exactly these goals and our 2010 legislative agenda.

4 month trends

The Christian Science Monitor (always an excellent newspaper — Carla and I publish there) asks if international investors are loosing faith in the dollar.

The chart shows how the dollar has been losing ground against the British pound for a couple of months — the months when our huge, Keynsian debt has been mounting.

The Monitor reports:

• a sense of risk among investors that the US could lose its AAA credit rating in ‘3 to 4 years.’ The UK — formerly the world’s financial superpower and still a main hub of global finance — also has an AAA rating.  But that rating’s trend was just regraded from ’stable’ to ‘negative.’  Could that happen to the US? Yes it could.
• a recognition of the total debt burden in the US — the gargantuan federal debt, the sum of state debts, and the massive personal debt levels.  We’re suddenly starting to save, but we’re a long way from being a creditor nation as we have traditionally been. Read the rest of this entry »