Links 11/8/09
Overweight Americans Push Back on Health Debate New York Times. I am going to be non-PC. I am not sympathetic. This is a public health crisis (diabetes, for starters) and we have people defending…”weight diversity?” Consequences of the Lehman failure Jim Hamilton Health Care Bill Passes Through House. Politics Still SUCK EconomPic Data

Quelle Surprise! Banks Overestimating Their Health
Remember Lake Woebegone: all the women are beautiful, and all the children are above average. And all banks in robust health. Self assessment (and undue self regard) was one of the big fallacies of the famed stress tests. The banks were asked to run scenarios on their own loan portfolios, with no independent verification of what was in them (as in no sampling of loan files, for instance). And on the trading side, the tests were run using the banks’ own risk models, which as we all know did a wonderful job in the run-up to the crisis. Not everyone is convinced. The Financial Stability Board, a group of international regulators tasked with developing new international

Frank Veneroso: Employment Losses Probably Continue at a 300,000 a Month Rate
From Veneroso Associates’ US Economy October Employment Report, ” Huge Discrepancy Between the Payroll and Household Surveys: Executive Summary 1. According to BLS, payrolls fell at a 188,000 a month rate over the last three months. But their own household survey says employment fell at a 589,000 a month rate. 2. Why the discrepancy? 3. Chris Manning of the BLS told us last month that payrolls were overestimated in the twelve months ending March by 824,000. The source of this error was the birth/death model. BLS used “plug” numbers for the number of births and deaths. These “plug” numbers were wrong. They led to es

Will Health Care Reform Lead to Salaried Doctors?
As readers probably know, the health care reform bill passed the House tonight, by a thin margin and with the Democrats offering a large concession by limiting reimbursements on abortions. Thomas Frank has a good piece in the New York Times tonight, in which he argues that health care reform might lead more doctors to be salaried rather than in an entrepreneurial format in a system that is piecework and therefore rewards more procedures, and therefore encourages doctors to run tests and procedures, adding to heal

Links 11/7/09
Three bald bears perplex experts BBC Antidepressants and Violence EconoSpeak. One of my pet peeves is how psychoactive medications are handed out like candy in the US. Just go to your MD, say you are exhausted, and once they eliminate anemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and low thryoid, they assume it’s in your head and will offer you all sorts of mood altering goodies. What does Google Suggest suggest about the state of humanity? CNet