The risk of a fatal heart attack rises when the U.S. economy strengthens and increases further if macroeconomic conditions remain robust over the next several years, according to a study published last month.

The death rate rises in the year the economy expands and grows further if the lower rate of joblessness is maintained, Christopher Ruhm wrote in his study.

A 1 percentage point drop in unemployment is estimated to raise mortality by 1.3 percent or 2,515 additional deaths per year from heart attacks, the study showed. The mortality rate is similar for males and females.

The 20-44 age group is at a relatively higher risk than older persons, especially if the economic upturn is sustained.

Update... Josh Hendrickson responds:

This bogus study about the rising death rates when the economy is doing well is an example of correlation rather than causality. Simply because more heart attacks occur during times of economic growth does not mean that the growth is the cause of the heart attacks.

Also, the sample strikes me as being very suspect. While I do not have a copy of the actual study, reports appear to suggest that the author is looking at deaths rather than deaths per capita and thus has chosen a sample of the highest populated states, which account for 3/4 of the country's heart attacks. It would be more prudent to use data from each of the 50 states and look at heart attacks per capita.

Finally, between 1979 and 1998 the United States only experienced two recessions -- one of which was relatively minor -- and thus the results could be largely due to the effects of outliers (a sharp, exogenous decline in heart attacks during a recession).

In China's case the matter of principle is continued control of the process of economic development by the government and the Communist Party. In America's case it is whether markets or government policies will be the fundamental drivers of global trade.

Can we please stop pretending that America's efforts to get China to revalue the yuan have anything to do with adherence to market principles? It's mercantilism pure and simple. Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham, authors of a bill that would punish China with enormous tariffs if they don't revalue, are simply trying to angle for more advantageous terms of trade for the US, presumably to help US manufacturing workers (i.e., unions). Our "strongly felt principle" is not some noble opposition to the idea that "government policies will be the fundamental drivers of global trade." It is that we want it to be our government that sets the policies, not theirs.

Update... Bret Swanson says much the same thing on his blog... and a lot more, too. A sample:

Lindsey writes that China wants the government to set monetary policy but the U.S. wants “the market” to set monetary policy. This is curious given that our Federal Reserve, not “the market,” has monopoly control over the money supply.

Seriously. It's bad enough you are a Republican wanker, but to critisize [sic] someone in the way they treated their sick child? You really are a sick f[**]k!

Great cartoon! Talk about hitting the nail on the head! It will be interesting to see if the Jesse Jackson you're-a-racist-card-carrying crowd takes great offense...

So I was taken aback when the lady behind the deli counter piled up roast beef slices on the digital scale until the weight reading was 1.05 pounds -- and then took two slices off the top, and threw them in the garbage can to bring the pile precisely to the 1.00 pounds I had asked for. Of course I didn't want to pay for those slices I hadn't ordered. But wouldn't everyone be better off if she had simply given them to me as a courtesy -- rather than throwing them away right before my eyes? Surely giving them to me for free would be better than just trashing them.

I doubt the lady thought about it at all, except that she knew I ordered a pound and she was going to give me a pound. But giving her credit for some microeconomic reasoning, perhaps she believed that, if she let me have the surplus for free, next time I would order 0.95 pounds -- expecting that the free 0.5 pounds would bring me up to the 1.00 pound that I really wanted. But as a consumer, I don't really think I would have reacted like she might have feared. For one thing, nobody orders 0.95 pounds. People work in round numbers, or at least large fractions (such as one half, three quarters, and so on). Second, there is risk to the consumer in deliberately underordering. What if next time the estimated number of slices was just perfect at 0.95, so there would no surplus for me to get free, and I'd have too little beef? Upon seeing that, would I ask for an additional .05 pounds, and bear the embarrassment of thus admitting that I was scamming her in the first place? Third, even if I were to scam her every time, and successfully, I am positive that the ability to run this scam would bring me back to that market more frequently for the sheer joy of getting away with something. While there, I would no doubt buy other things. And, of course, the market could always adjust the price per pound so that total profit were preserved even if I got away with the underordering scam every time. The joy of getting away with the scam would overcome the imperceptible increase in price.

Most of all, the reason why the lady should have given me the surplus is that to not do so was rude and grotesque. It would have been one thing if the surplus were put back into the cabinet to be sold to the next customer, or used in salad, or something or other. But to simply throw it away -- to signal to me, a customer, that the market would rather utterly waste those slices of beef rather than let me have them for free -- is an insult to me. And hearing those slices go "plop" into the garbage can wasn't exactly the most appetizing experience I've ever had.

The lady at the deli counter was extremely nice and pleasant. She was no martinet out to discipline me. She just made a real mistake in marketing -- in a place that otherwise knows just what its customers want and how to give it to them.

Update [4/7/2006]... Reader Anthony Mastroserio weighs in, as it were:

Having worked my way through college behind a deli counter in an east coast grocery store, I couldn't resist comment on your experience with a deli clerk the other day. I understand the point you were making concerning microeconomics, but my beef (pun not intended - really) lies with the clerk. If the store manager or owner ever caught anyone throwing perfectly good product in the garbage like that where I worked, they would have been fired on the spot. The correct thing for her to do was to point out that she over sliced by five hundredths of a pound. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people would say leave it on. Anyone asking to remove the extra slice or two would look pretty petty in front of the other customers waiting their turn. But if that should happen, the clerk would merely place the overage with the rest of the product for the next costumer.

Getting back to your point, and now speaking as someone in corporate finance in the same industry, giving away the extra slice or two might seem like a good marketing strategy, but would just pave the way for lots of hanky-panky. The clerk may have friends and family that shop there. What's the difference between giving away a slice or two once in a while and giving away a half pound or so on many transactions? It's also the reason that damaged goods are not sold at reduced prices to consumers or employees (they are sent to a reclamation center - because if we did, there would be lots of damaged merchandise.

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow on Wednesday said he expects U.S. payroll data on Friday to reflect strength in the economy...

"I'm looking forward to the jobs numbers on Friday. I think they'll be good numbers," Snow said.

In response to criticism about a massive new pork project slipped into the emergency Iraq/Katrina appropriations bills yesterday, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) lashed out at anti-pork bloggers and activists. “I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them,” Lott said. “They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina."

Quite frankly, this proposal – what I’ll dub the Railroad to Nowhere – might be the most audacious pork project I have ever seen. Sen. Lott Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), the appropriations committee chairman who was responsible for inserting the project into the emergency spending bill, are basically asking the American taxpayers to pay nearly a billion dollars to destroy a bridge that is fully operational in order to appease developers and local officials who are eager to exploit Katrina for their own gain.

This pork project and Lott’s comments ought to be a call-to-arms for the Porkbusting community. The emergency spending bill that was passed by the appropriations committee yesterday is expected to be on the Senate floor during the week of April 24. I strongly urge you all to drum up as much opposition to this as possible. If possible, identify local officials or voters in Mississippi who do not agree with this proposal. We cannot defeat this project without strong, sustained grassroots opposition.

Here's the story. Yesterday the Senate appropriations committee held a hearing to “mark-up” an emergency spending bill to pay for Iraq and Katrina. In addition to being significantly more expensive than the House-passed version or the president’s request, the appropriations bill contained a massive $700 million pork project for the state of Mississippi. Specifically, the bill provides $700 million to buy a rail line from CSX, a multi-billion dollar railroad company.

The kicker is that the rail line, which was seriously damaged by Katrina, was just repaired at a cost of almost $300 million and has been fully operational since the end of January. But it gets worse. State and local officials plan to buy out the rail line for the purposes of destroying it and relocating it to make room for waterfront development. Local developers have been pushing this plan for years, but the rail plan regained steam following Katrina.

The Mississippi Governor’s Commission, which was established by Gov. Haley Barbour to develop ideas for redevelopment in the wake of Katrina, noted this idea in its final report to Barbour in December 2005. However, the report pegged the cost of re-locating the rail line at $795 million and stated that the idea “is no longer seen as practical.”

Mr. Hubbard is the White House's lead pitchman on the president's health-care proposals. They include...making hospitals' and doctors' prices available to consumers...

...doctors and hospitals are wary of Mr. Hubbard's push to publicize their prices. ...Mr. Hubbard got into a testy exchange with Daniel Waldmann, vice president for government relations at the Dallas hospital company Tenet Healthcare Corp. Mr. Waldmann said insurance plans, rather than hospitals, were the best source of price information for most people....Mr. Hubbard didn't buy the argument. His voice rising, he called providers' reluctance to hand out prices "absolutely indefensible," and asked, "How can you look at yourselves in the mirror?"

In an interview later, Mr. Hubbard said he was shocked by Mr. Waldmann's comments and said it was "un-American to not make price and quality information available if the customer wants access to it."

Since you're more plugged into Bush's economic policy than I, perhaps you can tell me what the heck Al Hubbard and his White House pals are thinking. As the Journal reported yesterday, Hubbard has been demanding health care providers and insurers publicly disclose their price lists. He called the refusal to do so "un-American." What neither Hubbard nor the Journal acknowledged, however, is that price disclosure puts every doctor and insurer at risk for antitrust prosecution. The FTC has labeled the mere exchange of price data between doctors as illegal.

I've talked to medical groups who've told their members never to disclose price lists for fear of attracting attention from the DOJ, FTC, and state attorneys general. Hubbard is either ignorant of this problem or he's actually trying to aid and abet the prosecutors.

Massachusetts lawmakers overwhelmingly approved an ambitious health-care bill on Tuesday that would make it the first U.S. state to require nearly all residents to be insured or face penalties.

The bill, which comes as traditional employer-based coverage is shrinking nationwide, will provide health care to about 95 percent of the state's half million uninsured residents by 2009, state officials said...

"Some 500,000 citizens who go without insurance today will be taken care of," House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, a Democrat, told the state Legislature to loud applause.

As someone lucky enough to live in the People's Republic of MA, I would just like to point out that this amounts to a "breath tax". You have not bought, sold, or earned anything, yet you owe a tax because you are still breathing. Imagine the possibilities this opens up!

On tonight's NBC Evening News with Brian Wilson, there was a segment on the Massachusetts health care plan that is now all the buzz. Twice, Wilson claimed that already we are forced to buy car insurance, so being forced to buy health insurance would be any different. Not so fast there, Brian.

All the states have financial responsibility laws with respect to operating motor vehicles. That is, people who operate motor vehicles are required to carry liability insurance to at least the minimum the states require. That liability insurance is there to help pay for any injuries or property damage you might inflict on others while operating your motor vehicle. On the other hand, if you don't operate a motor vehicle you don't have to carry "car insurance." In a similar vein, if you finance the purchase of your motor vehicle by borrowing the lender will, as a condition of the loan, make the motor vehicle collateral on the loan and require that you carry property insurance on it, with the lender named as loss payee just in case their collateral is damaged or destroyed in any accident you might have. People who don't operate motor vehicles don't have to do that, and some people who operate motor vehicles without liens on them choose not to insure the value of the vehicle.

That's not even close to the state-level HillaryCare law Massachusetts legislators just passed. According to the descriptions of the plan I've heard, everyone somehow, some way, must buy health insurance. Period. That's nowhere near that same thing as Massachusetts requiring motor vehicle operators to buy "car insurance."

There is a fixed supply of medical services in the PRT (People's Republic of Taxachusetts) and now the demand for medical services will be increased, as people forced to buy prepaid medical services will undoubtedly consume more health care. According to the politicians, this will lower costs.

I'm a soon to be ex resident of Massoftwoshits

"I think we soon ought to consider putting at least one nail in the NAIRU coffin. Not only has the economy failed to perform according to that framework in the last five or six years but, so far as I'm aware, going back 15 or 16 years there just is no evidence of an empirical relation between labor market conditions and inflation."

--Minneapolis Fed Pres Gary Stern at the 12/19/00 FOMC meeting

Hank Paulson, Goldman's CEO, came under fire for the firm's environmental policies -- not as a corporate predator despoiling the earth, but for saving it at shareholders' expense. Steven Milloy, an executive at the Free Enterprise Action Fund, had claimed that Goldman's policies are anti-growth, harmful to shareholders and designed to advance Mr. Paulson's personal causes. He objected to Goldman's gift of 680,000 acres in Chile to the Wildlife Conservation Society, calling it a conflict of interest because Mr. Paulson is chairman of the Nature Conservancy, which works with the society, and has a daughter, Merritt, who sits on the society's board of advisors. (Mr. Paulson's post as chairman emeritus of the Peregrine Fund, which saves birds of prey, seems an altogether more useful interest for a CEO and did not figure in Mr. Milloy's complaint.)

For Berkshire to lose the $14 billion that the company says is at risk, all four indexes covered by the puts would have to fall to zero, according to Gary Gastineau, managing director of ETF Consultants LLC, a research firm in Summit, New Jersey. That's unlikely given historical trends.

Update [4/4/2006]... Reader Patrick J. Duggan sagely says,

I thought Warren Buffett was sure that derivatives were the root of all evil? The way he's fared with his US Dollar currency bet, this latest divergence from his tried and true strategy makes me worry about the health of the stock market.

Many sent in this page on Rep. Loretta Sanchez's site. Here are some more, in no particular order. Sen. Bill Nelson; Rep. Dennis Kucinich; House Min. Leader Nancy Pelosi; Speaker Denny Hastert; Sen. Ben Nelson; Rep. Jack Kingston; Rep. Lee Terry; Rep. Mike Honda; Rep. Dan Boren; Rep. Geoff Davis; Rep. Sue "Hell No" Myrick; Rep. Vito Fossella; Rep. Brad Sherman; Rep. Jean Schmidt; Rep. John Sullivan; Rep. Shelley Berkley; Rep. Adam Putnam; Rep. Bob Filner; Rep. Richard Pombo; Rep. Denny Rehberg; Rep. Ellen Tauscher; Sen. Barbara Mikulski; Mikulski again; House candidate Raj from "The Apprentice"; Rep. Rosa DeLauro; Rep. Katherine Harris; Rep. Pat McHenry; Rep. Marty Meehan; Rep. Neil Abercrombie; Rep. Mary Bono; The Backstreet Boys; Rep. Tom Petri; Sen. John Ensign; Rep. Jim Gerlach; Gerlach again; Rep. Jane Harman; Sen. John Cornyn; Rep. Ruben Hinajosa; Rep. Louie Gohmert; Rep. Tom DeLay; Rep. Tom Tancredo; and finally, one of you just sent this in for old time's sake.