I’ve gone on and on about how not to create jobs. In the cover story of this week’s Time, I explain what will work. The piece begins:
Later this year, a marketing manager will sit down for his first day of work at HomeAway, a company that helps people rent their vacation homes online. In the firm’s sleek Austin, Texas, headquarters, a
…
There’s a piece by a veterinarian in the current issue of Newsweek that makes the case for structuring the human health-care system more like the one we have for animals. That doesn’t sound like a completely ridiculous idea to me.
The Senate today passed by a 68-29 margin a $17.6-billion measure intended to spur hiring nationwide, sending the bill to the White House for the president’s expected signature… The bill would grant employers an exemption from their 6.2% Social Security payroll contribution for every new employee hired through the
…
Two days ago I wrote a post about why I think price tags could save American health care. One of the great forces of the U.S. economy is the price-conscious consumer. Collectively we manage to drive down the cost of everything from bar soap to tax preparation. Such is the nature of a competitive marketplace with transparent prices. So …
A big part of the reason consumer goods are so cheap in the U.S. is because people always know what they’re paying. As a consequence, consumers can push prices lower by voting with their feet. If CVS tries to sell me a toothbrush for $4 when the one at Rite Aid goes for $3, I will shop at Rite Aid and CVS will learn its lesson. This …
Over the weekend, Warren Buffett posted his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. You can read it here (PDF).
The 20-page letter is, as always, partly a recap of the Buffett philosophy: only buy businesses you understand, keep plenty of cash on hand, run companies for long-term return and not short-term stock-price …
This morning the Commerce Department released revised figures for fourth quarter GDP. There was good news: economic output increased at a 5.9% seasonally adjusted annualized pace, up from an earlier measure of 5.7%, showing that the economy is buzzing along even faster than we thought.
Stock futures promptly dropped. Wait. What?
Federal Reserve governor Elizabeth Duke is due to give a really nice piece of testimony tomorrow unpacking what’s going on with small-businesses lending. Judging by the advance text up on the Fed’s web site, it will be a joyously nuanced picture. Banks are hesitant to lend, yes, and are sometimes hamstrung by their own imprudent lending …
I’ve been pretty critical of a lot of the ideas coming out of Washington about how to encourage job creation, so I thought I’d take a breather and do a more glass-half-full post. As it turns out, I’ve been out in America this week doing some reporting on the topic, speaking with a lot of small-business owners, start-up CEOs and …
I am thrilled, as are many others, that Congress has found a way to actually move forward on an issue. I refer to the apparent progress of the $15-billion job-creation bill.
Unfortunately, as I’ve explained before, I’m pretty sure the legislation won’t have as much of an impact as we’re hoping for. I saw another survey just today that …
The Curious Capitalist family is getting bigger! Michael Schuman, Time‘s Asia correspondent extraordinaire, will be joining the blogging ranks as early as tomorrow (or today for those of you, like Michael, who are reading this from Hong Kong).
Michael has his own Wikipedia entry, which covers a lot of ground but fails to mention what a …
My colleague Michael Grunwald has a piece on Time.com making the case for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), since it seems the Senate Banking Committee may soon deliver the whole idea to the trash heap. I’ve said in the past why I think a stand-alone agency is a great idea; Ezra Klein more recently summed up the argument:
The
…
