In world oil markets US fracked oil is the marginal supply of oil. Oil has to be $80/bbl to make US fracked oil profit. If oil falls below this threshold the supply of fracked oil will start contracting.This creates a very solid floor for world oil prices. This is a structural shift from what has prevailed historically. Traditionally, in the oil industry virtually all your costs were fixed or sunk cost and variable cost were relatively insignificant. So when prices fall it pays oil producers to continue producing as long as revenues exceeded variable costs. So low prices did not cause oil supplies to contract as intro economic theory implied. But now, fracked oil wells have a very short life span --2 to 3 years -- and it requires very large variable costs to keep the oil flowing. Consequently, if prices fall to about or under $80/bbl the supply of fracked oil will contract quickly. This produces a very solid floor under oil prices of about $80 and since oil is the almost perfect example of one world price this floor price applies to the entire world-wide oil supply.

I worked in the investment community during the time of the bond vigilantes. Every time I hears some bond manager bragging about punishing the government I would ask them how losing their clients money punished the government? I got a lot of strange looks, but no one ever answered the question.

But there was no gas shortage. There was plenty of gas in the service station tanks. There was an electricity shortage so they could not pump the gas. Your entire analysis is off-base.

Labor compensation data does not include payments in the form of stock options. Since this has been the major source of the explosion of the compensation of top executives I wonder if this is really an unrecorded increase in executive compensation rather than an increase in profits. I have not seen a good estimate of how large the increase in stock options has been and how much it distorts the compensation data -- does anyone know of one??

Your link does not work. It leads to a blank page.

Sorry, pasted the wrong link. http://notaneconomist.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/health-care-costs-down-the-up-escalator/#more-546

The standard way to look at health care spending is as a share of GDP. Looked at this way it looks like the monster that ate Tokyo --an insurmountable problem. But if you look at the growth in health care spending in isolation you get a very different perspective. This shows that for years the trend in health care spending has been for ever slower growth. Apparently in recent years the problem has been more of weak GDP growth not strong health care spending growth. http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/10/health-care-spending.html?m=0 At not an economists he looked at the data in different ways, but it still shows a trend of slowing health care spending. http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/10/health-care-spending.html?m=0

You connected to Kling where he advances the theory that cutting taxes on savings, or increasing the return to savings will lead to more savings. But we have been implementing such policies for over 30 years now through 401s, IRAs, etc., and we have developed a wealth of data that directly contradicts that theory. The alternative theory is that people save to achieve a goal--maybe having a million dollar portfolio at retirement, for example. If people save to achieve a goal than increasing their rate of return leads to less, not more savings. Greenspan even coauthored a paper that demonstrated this. How long are we going to let people like Kling get away with such obviously bad and disproved theories????

The regulations are written the way they are because the corporate lobbyist want them to be written that way.

I forgot, 9. A financial panic that required the largest government bailout in history to keep the financial system from imploding on itself.

During the 8 years of the Bush administration pro-market policies we had: 1. The weakest economic expansion on record. 2. Essentially zero employment growth. 3. The personal savings rate fell to nearly zero. 4. The federal budget swung from a surplus equal to some 2% of GDP to a deficit equal to about 10% of GDP. 5. The trade weighted dollar fell over a third. 6. Depending on what measure you use the stock market fell some 40% to 50%. 7. Oh yes, his term ended in the second worse recession in US economic history. Why any businessman would view the Republican record and think their policies were good for business is beyond me.

This chart compares statutory rates where, for example the US rate is 39% even though the effective rate for the US is around 21%. Comparing statutory tax rates is pure junk economics comparable to looking under the street light for the car keys you lost in the parking lot.