Dean Baker
The Hankyoreh (South Korea), February 8, 2013

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, February 8, 2013

A front-page article in the print edition of today’s Washington Post details how New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez twice approached federal health-care officials about Dr. Solomon Melgen’s outstanding $8.9 million debt to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which the doctor claims was the result of being overbilled. Melgen, personally and through his ophthalmology company, has made major contributions to Menendez’s political campaigns.

This is the latest news to follow reports that on Wednesday, January 30, the FBI raided Melgen’s offices, soon after which the senator’s office described the doctor as “a friend and political supporter of Senator Menendez for many years.” Two days later, following John Kerry’s resignation from his seat as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become Secretary of State, Menendez took over the position, one of the most powerful and prestigious in Congress.

Menendez, who is Cuban American, has taken a hard line against easing travel restrictions to Cuba and has been described as “fiercely pro-embargo.” The New Jersey Democrat has also worked closely with lawmakers across the aisle on policy towards Iran, including his co-authorship of sanctions legislation with Republican Senator Mark Kirk last year.

Early reports of the FBI’s search focused on allegations that in 2010 Senator Menendez accepted free flights to the Dominican Republic from Dr. Solomon Melgen and had sex with prostitutes during these trips, a claim he has vehemently denied. It was also noted that Menendez is not married, and that prostitution is legal in the Caribbean nation. The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating the senator, who in January of this year wrote a $58,000 personal check to reimburse Melgen for two trips.

Robert Samuelson is looking at the latest projections for the budget and the economy from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and struggling with their implications for the deficit. He presents the three reasons that CBO gives for reducing the debt from the projected levels:

1) fear of financial crises;

2) crowding out of investment;

3) we may need to borrow more in the future to cover the costs of a war or natural disaster.

It's worth briefly addressing these concerns, but first we need to note that CBO's track record on the economy in recent years has been nothing short of abysmal. If you want some cheap fun, take a look at CBO's projections for the economy from Janaury of 2008 (Table E-1). Get a load of that 4.8 percent unemployment rate that we are supposed be enjoying right now following three years in which GDP growth averaged 3.3 percent (and that's with no recession in 2008-2009).

CBO's predictive ability had not improved much a year later when the economy was in the middle of the free fall following the collapse of Lehman. Its projections from March of 2009 hugely underestimated the severity of the downturn and projected that the economy would have largely bounced back to full employment by the end of 2011, even if there was no stimulus from the government or extraordinary measures taken by the Federal Reserve Board.

These projections were about as wrong as they could possibly be. We would have done every bit as well finding a drunk person on the street and asking him for his economic forecasts for the next five years.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with its new projections for the budget today. There are not many surprises. It projects somewhat slower health care cost growth in recognition of the recent trend in the sector. It also projects continued high unemployment, with the unemployment rate not projected to fall below 6.0 percent until late in the year 2016.

One interesting item is the sharp projected increase in interest costs. In the baseline projections, outlays are projected to rise by 0.1 percentage points of GDP from 22.8 percent in 2012 to 22.9 percent in 2023. However interest costs are projected to rise by 1.9 percentage points, meaning that non-interest spending is projected to fall sharply over this period. (The baseline includes several assumptions that are unrealistic, so it is probably not the best set of projections.)

It is also worth noting that CBO has become very pessimistic about the economy's growth potential and the lower limit on the unemployment rate. It puts potential growth over the decade at just 2.2 percent annually. Part of the explanation is that it expects capital deepening (the increase in the ratio of capital to labor) to make less of a contribution to growth than in prior decades. This is a bit hard to understand since CBO projects that the cost of capital will be low compared to the 1980s and 1990s when capital made a considerably larger contribution to GDP growth.

 

                        Source: CBO, Federal Reserve Board, and Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The graph shows CBO's projection for the contribution of capital to growth. At 1.0 percentage point annually, the projected contribution of capital growth in the next decade is lower than in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Mark WeisbrotAl Jazeera English, 29 de enero, 2013En Inglés

It started in Colombia in 2000, moved on to Mexico in 2008 and now rages in Central America.  Since the beginning of the century, the U.S.-backed “war on drugs” has progressively spread throughout the northern part of Latin America, leaving tens of thousa