By Dean Baker

The latest hot topic of debate in Washington is the rising cost of the Social Security disability program, which provides insurance for workers who are unable to work due to health conditions. According to several major news stories, the cost of the program is out of control, with large numbers of people opting to take a benefit that averages $1,100 a month rather than working for a living. Following off these pieces, many in the Washington elite are now on the warpath, anxious to stop these freeloaders from taking the taxpayers' money.

While the story of freeloading run amok may have lots of appeal to the Washington elite, it happens not to fit the facts. The cost of the disability program has been rising, but the explanation is even simpler than bad morals: we’re getting older.

Workers are more likely to be disabled in their fifties or sixties than in their twenties or thirties. With the huge baby boom cohorts now occupying these prime disability ages, it should not be

By Terry Connelly

The free-world equity markets momentarily quivered when – in a moment of either candor or hubris or both, Dutch Finance Minister and incoming leader of the eurozone Finance Ministerial conference negotiating Cyprus’ survival in the euro – opined that the terms finally agreed should serve as a template for resolving future crises involving eurozone bank solvency.

In particular, the markets – not to mention a select group of Russian multi-millionaires with large deposits in the leading Cypriot banks – focused on the terms requiring uninsured depositors in those banks to “contribute” what has turned out to up to 60% of their bankbooks to the “bail-in” recapitalizing the surviving bank to at least notional solvency. If this were to be the new model for eurozone rescues of profligate banks wreaking financial havoc on profligate governments (see Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy) then deposits in those banks beyond the local deposit insurance levels recently set in