Dean Baker
Dean Baker
Dean Bakeris an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He has been a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan...
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We've backed ourselves into a very dangerous situation. The economy is dependent on everyone consuming like crazy. If everyone heard my diatribe and said, 'Yeah, we better start saving,' the economy would go into a recession.
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Things do seem like they're out of line, but of course I've been seeing warning bells for several years.
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If Medicare could negotiate directly with drug companies it could save the federal and state governments hundred of billions of dollars and cut insurance premiums.
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It's clearly very strong across the board. There's no evidence of any downturn at this point.
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They can't continue to spend beyond their income indefinitely. If people are building up large amounts of debt, you reach a point where they can't continue.
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The optimistic scenario gives you about 2 million jobs next year -- about 180,000 a month. If I had to make my best bet, I'd say we'll have level home prices and growth of about 1.5 percent for the year. There'll be job creation of about 80,000 or 90,000 a month.
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First of all, it's very expensive to administer private accounts, especially if you let people manage these accounts themselves, ... Bush is vague on how he would set it up and make it work.
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is kind of (the oil companies') good luck. They didn't do anything to earn it. And we're sitting here with a $150 billion bill from Katrina.
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People are willing to pay them because there is an expectation that prices will continue to rise. Once people don't have that expectation, things will change.
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On this policy, the district is already in compliance with the requirements and has been for a couple of years, ... This policy just formalizes it.
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Normally when you talk about housing bubbles bursting, you're talking about a specific local market. But we've never had a nationwide run-up in home prices like this. I don't think it's realistic to think the decline won't also be national. I think a 15 percent nationwide decline is very plausible. In many bubble areas, could be looking at 20-25, maybe 30 percent declines.
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I've always thought you'll have the movement in price before you'll see it on quantity side, ... As long as the price remains high, if you're a builder, you want to get the houses up in order to cash in.
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Saving Social Security with Stock: The Promises Don't Add Up.
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These monthly numbers are very erratic. It can be that this is a sign (of the bubble bursting), but I would never make too much of one month's number. Especially since the other timely data we get, the mortgage applications for home purchases, have still been pretty high.