links for 2010-02-07

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy, will convene a joint hearing to examine the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs by expanding the use of solar energy.

Boas predicts that many thin-film startups won't be able to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars they need to reach commercial-scale production. In the current risk-averse economic climate, small companies without the needed "massive" balance sheets will have a tough time ramping up to a significant scale, and many won't be able to continue to compete, he said.

The economic recession and rising unemployment—plus changing demographics and baby boomers aging into Medicare—are among the factors expected to influence health spending during 2009–2019. In 2009 the health share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to have increased 1.1 percentage points to 17.3 percent—the largest single-year increase since 1960. Average public spending growth rates for hospital, physician and clinical services, and prescription drugs are expected to exceed private spending growth in the first four years of the projections. As a result, public spending is projected to account for more than half of all U.S. health care spending by 2012.

With the health care tab for last year coming to $2.5 trillion, health care spending now represents 17.3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product — a 1.1 percent bigger portion of the nation’s economy than in 2008. This represents the biggest one-year expansion of health care’s share of the economy since the federal government began keeping records in 1960.

NBR anchor Susie Gharib interviewed Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, earlier today. Susie asked Hoenig what it will take to generate strong job growth. Hoenig also talked about the timetable for raising interest rates and the keys to financial regulation.