Back when I was just starting out in journalism, I left a job with the Washington Post/Newsweek Company to come to Washington DC.

The H.R. person conducting my exit interview offered me something called "COBRA" coverage. It was some kind of way to keep the health insurance I had while I found new work. I didn't understand it. It was new. I didn't want to pay out of pocket and my new job would have health insurance, right?

The H.R. woman seemed a bit too eager to get me to sign on the line confirming I did not want coverage.

And, of course, when I got to DC I was in for a rude surprise. My new job did NOT offer health insurance. And I spent the next year trying to cobble some coverage together.

At the time, it did not seem a very big deal. After all, I was young and healthy. Now that I am older and feel less invincible my health care lapses seem like a risky bet.

Under the health care reform now making its way through Congress, "young invincibles" -- those 25 and younger -- would be required to buy coverage. If reform passes, future generations will not be able to keep the change and wing their coverage like I did.

Under the Senate Finance plan, these young people could buy a low-cost policy covering catastrophic care.

What's the upshot of all this? Bringing young people into the "risk pool" lowers costs for the older people like me who are already in the system. Eventually, younger people will become older people and they too should enjoy lower premiums.

"World Tries to Buck Up Dollar" reads the headline in the Wall Street Journal.

Korea, Russia are buying up dollars to keep the greenback from falling. Are these nations concerned about our economic welfare? Do they believe supporting the dollar will stabilize the global economy?

No.

Simply put, countries that have sustained themselves by exporting to the US want to keep up the game. When the dollar falls, it makes our exports cheaper. It makes our imports more expensive. In other words, we can afford to buy less from the rest of the world.

No question bank regulators failed to detect, prevent or ameliorate the financial crisis. No question we can do better. The real hard stuff is figuring out how.

It's tempting to think reorganizing and creating new offices to replace those who failed will solve the problem. Or at least help.

But will it? The history of government reorganizations is not promising here. NYU Professor Paul Light studies this kind of thing. He counted some 10 reorganizations of the Department of Defense which began almost immediately after it was formed.

We've already reformed and reorganized the Department of Homeland Security three times.

Now Senator Chris Dodd wants to create a single super-regulator. The new Financial Institutions Regulatory Administration would inherit the supervisory staff of the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

We are talking about a lot of people here.

The teen unemployment set a new record in October: 27.6%.

Faced with the scary job market, many young people are heading for college or graduate school. Most of the increase in college enrollment is at community colleges.

It makes sense. If teenagers and young workers can't find a job, they can ride out the storm and use the time to improve their skills.

The only problem is that many other young people have the same idea. With employers cutting back and more people going to college, we could face a glut of new grads in a few years.

In some sense, the added education only postpones the job market pain. And that pain is likely to last for a while. Younger workers are often the first fired and the last hired. The Economic Policy Institute's Heidi Shierholz thinks the soft job market could last for another five to seven years!

"[P]arsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens (for example, words), to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given (more or less) formal grammar."

Let us now learn to parse the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee statement.

To begin with, the Federal Open Market Committee -- FOMC for short -- sets interest rate policy. These 12 people have a lot to say about how much you pay for a mortgage.

The statement comes out at 2:15 after the FOMC meets. You can find a statement here.

The first paragraph of the statement usually describes the Fed's take on the economy. The major sectors of the economy -- employment, industrial production, etc. -- are usually discussed. Important economic trends are mentioned here.

The second paragraph is often the "inflation paragraph." The Fed opines on any "slack" in the economy. Slack is often a fancy way of saying lots of people are out of work. If there is lots of slack in the economy -- unemployment -- people can't find jobs or are worried about finding jobs meaning they are unwilling to buy much. That means businesses can't raise prices.

The final paragraph is traditionally the "balance of risks" paragraph. As the financial crisis took hold, the balance or risks became a balance of terror. This paragraph became devoted to listing all the ways the Fed is fighting the credit crisis. Look here now to find hints on how fast the Fed is "unwinding" the various credit supports it has put in place.

Ken Feinberg, the Treasury's Special Master, has weighed in on bailed -out banks. The Federal Reserve is getting into the act, asking banks to explain the relation between pay practices and risk.

Today it was the Supreme Court's turn to dip a toe into the national discussion.

The case at hand is Jones v Harris Associates. Jones and two other plaintiffs are individual investors. Harris Associates is the sponsor of the Oakmark Funds and the investment adviser, a common feature of the mutual fund industry. To manage the conflict of interest between the adviser and the fund it operates, the law requires compensation be set by an independent board of trustees representing the fund.

The shareholders in this case argue Harris' fees are excessive because they are twice as high as those charged to institutions for virtually identical advice. Harris -- and the mutual fund industry -- argue the advice and services are very different, justifying the higher fees.

Climate change is one of the most complicated subjects I have ever taken on. It involves intricate scientific topics and will likely have broad economic impact.

And clearly many Americans are having a tough time making up their mind on this topic. A recent poll by the Pew Center shows the number of people who think climate change is caused by human activity is falling. This alarms many scientists who consider the evidence to be clear cut.

Rather than opine on this, I thought I'd point readers to some of the sources I have found useful on this topic.

In general, Americans dislike their government. Washington is an epithet. A foreign land where people who are out of touch do silly things.

Get specific and Americans admire and respect their government. We honor the courage of our soldiers. We watch movies and TV shows about the exploits of our FBI agents.

Less glamorous, but still worthy of respect is the Congressional Budget Office. These are the wonks and numbers nerds who try to keep lawmakers honest by costing out proposals and asking the tough question: "How much will this cost?"

CBO will be answering those very questions soon on health care reform. CBO's answers will help determine whether the public option lives or dies. Even whether we get reform or not.

I ran into Don while I was waiting for the bus last night. Knows everyone. Always a kind word. That's Don.

After the usual talk about the kids and the family, Don started in about the economy. He was telling me that it's a different world in Southeast Washington, the heart of the African American community here. The recession is a depression there. Much higher unemployment and much higher rates of foreclosures.

My talk with Don brought home to me again how the Great Recession is not an equal opportunity hardship. If you live anywhere near where they make cars (or used to) you know this. If you are a teenager or member of a minority, you know jobs are non-existent.

And, if you run a small business, you know that credit is tight. The administration tried to help out small business today. Late, some small banks say. But the higher loan limits proposed for the SBA will help.

Many people commented on the $250 payment that Obama now backs for seniors. Since there was no inflation this year, there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security. The $250 check is supposed to "make up" for the non-COLA.

Let's just say that a lot of the comments have been along the lines of "What is the government thinking!" "$250 is not enough to keep up."

Some perspective:

From Medicare: Based on the bids submitted by Part D plans, it is estimated the average monthly premium that beneficiaries will pay for standard prescription drug coverage in 2010 will increase $2.

Under federal law, three our of four seniors will not see an increase in their Part B Medicare Premiums, because they are tied to the Social Security COLA.

Also, wages for most workers are DOWN 1.4% this year.

And yes, to answer one comment, this $250 payment appears to be going to all Social Security recipients, even those working and those making hefty incomes. Now, how Congress decides to pay for this is an open question. Some want to raise payroll taxes on upper-income taxpayers to offset the cost of this program.

For more on this, check out this blog entry.

Today, the Obama administration jumped out in front of the news, announcing it will support a $250 payment to seniors (and veterans and the disabled) because they are "are struggling to make ends meet with retirement savings that have not fully recovered from their losses over the first year of the recession."

By that logic, wouldn't most of the country qualify?

The White House announcement avoids any mention of the COLA issue, except to say that the announcement is tomorrow. But this clearly sets a precedent for adjusting the COLA if the results are not politically acceptable.

How much do you pay for health insurance? Most people answer that by talking about the co-payment their employer charges them. Others talk about out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs and medical supplies.

But the real cost for most people is actually much higher. To economists there is little difference between the wages your employer pays and the benefits your employer provides. Both can be considered income, because both are compensation. So, even though employees don't see the entire health care premium employers pay on their behalf, all of that money is coming out of a worker's paycheck in the form of reduced wages.

This is a political problem now that Congress is trying to decide how much a typical American family should pay for health insurance. This debate falls under the heading of affordability.

Last week I ran a story talking about the growing pressure on the Obama administration to come up with new jobs programs.

This week the White House is responding.

But the ideas floated so far -- tax credit for new job creation, extension of expiring provisions -- makes me think the White House may be playing for time. These are the kind of ideas you float to show you care about a problem, but they aren't big enough to make a dent in our unemployment rate.

Since the stimulus package is still ramping up, it might make a lot of sense to just be patient.

And it is also possible the Obama administration wants to wait on a jobs plan until the time is politically ripe. Announcing something now would simply take the focus away from health care.

When prices fall across much of the economy you get deflation. It's the opposite of inflation and it can be more painful than rising prices. If you doubt that, just think about the housing mess: falling home prices mean rising defaults mean . . . you get the idea.

Deflation also means seniors will almost certainly not be getting a cost of living increase this year. According to the formula the Social Security Administration uses to calculate the COLA, inflation is down about 2% this year.

Seniors are not happy about it, which is the subject of my story today.

On the flip side, that means workers will not see their Social Security payroll taxes go up next year. The cap on wages subject to Social Security is also set to inflation and, hence, will not be rising.

Now the CEO of ICANN, Rod Beckstrom wants to expand the addresses available to the world. I spoke to him about that and the global nature of the Internet. Push play to watch the extended version of my interview with Beckstrom.