September 13, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Emek Basker writes a fair article on Wal-Mart, entitled “The Causes and Consequences of Wal-Mart’s Growth.” If you subscribe to The Journal of Economic Perspectives, you can find it beginning on page 177. If, on the other hand, you do not subscribe to this publication, this link will take you to a free version.

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September 13, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Feeling down, even suicidal? DO NOT call the suicide help line.

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September 13, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Posted today on Mankiw’s blog:

Did you know that the average Fed Funds rate for August was 5.0%? That is, the Fed already cut rates by a quarter point–it just did not announce it.

He is right: The intended Federal Funds rate is still at 5.25, but the actual rate was 5.02 in August.

In the preceding 13 months, the Fed missed its target by no more than a single basis point. But then in August it misses by 23 basis points. Why? Is this an unannounced change in the target, or is the Fed getting worse at hitting its target?

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September 13, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

John Stossel has another one of his “specials” to air this Friday on ABC, and he’s doing a remarkable job promoting it. I see a new piece from him promoting it every few days. Here’s his latest, which appears today in the WSJ.  Notable:

Mr. Moore claims that because private insurance companies are driven by profit, they will always deny care to deserving patients. For this reason, he argues, profit-making health-insurance companies should be abolished, our health- care dollars turned over to the government, and the U.S. should institute a health-care system like the ones in Canada, Britain or France. But does Mr. Moore think, even for a second, that any of the government systems he touts in his movie would have provided a bone-marrow transplant to Ms. Pierce’s husband? Fat chance.

When government is in charge of health care, the result is not that everyone gets access to experimental treatments, but that people get less of the care that is absolutely necessary. At any given time, just under a million Canadians are on waiting lists to receive care, and one in eight British patients must wait more than a year for hospital treatment. Canadian Karen Jepp, who gave birth to quadruplets last month, had to fly to Montana for the delivery: neonatal units in her own country had no room.

Rationing in Britain is so severe that one hospital recently tried saving money by not changing bed-sheets between patients. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over, British papers report. The wait for an appointment with a dentist is so long that people are using pliers to pull out their own rotting teeth.

Patients in countries with government-run health care can’t get timely access to many basic medical treatments, never mind experimental treatments. That’s why, if you suffer from cancer, you’re better off in the U.S., which is home to the newest treatments and where patients have access to the best diagnostic equipment. People diagnosed with cancer in America have a better chance of living a full life than people in countries with socialized systems. Among women diagnosed with breast cancer, only one-quarter die in the U.S., compared to one-third in France and nearly half in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Moore thinks that profit is the enemy and government is the answer. The opposite is true. Profit is what has created the amazing scientific innovations that the U.S. offers to the world. If government takes over, innovation slows, health care is rationed, and spending is controlled by politicians more influenced by the sob story of the moment than by medical science.

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