Note: I planned to finish this here, but the post became far too long, and splits quite well. What follows is applications of economic theory and background material on financial decisions. To be clear, I hate the phrase “casino capitalism.” It’s rather unfair to casinos, which know how to do risk management: make an offer […]
by cactus Poverty and the Real Median Income I want to take a break from my usual taxes and economic growth beat, and I figured why not look at poverty and income. Normally I’d pull the data from the Census site, but for some reason it was down when I went looking (that’s right, folks, […]
Edmund L. Andrews (most recently of the NYT and being pilloried by Megan McArdle for having the gall to marry a woman whose previous marriage ended in bankruptcy) has joined Andrew Samwick, Stan Collender, Pete Davis et al. over at Capital Gains and Games. His first post, “Hopes of a Chastened Capitalist” is here.
Pete Davis: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson initially sold Congress in the fall of 2008 on emergency intervention to purchase “toxic assets,” but quickly reversed course in favor of direct capital injections. Those favored financial institutions revived more quickly than most thought possible and most of those injections have already been paid back. However, most of […]
So far the topical open threads have gathered great material. As Bruce mentioned and hoped, the partisan nature that accompanied certain posts was muted when readers could offer a look at topics such as trade and entitlements without the intervening point of view of a particular post. Angry Bear will always offer attitude and links, but I […]
This is a follow up to an article I wrote earlier this week, Older workers working longer; labor-force participation falling. In response to the article, which highlights the BLS employment and labor-force participation projections for 2008-2018, 2slugbaits (a loyal AB commenter) presented the following point: The 2 industry sectors expected to have the largest employment […]
UPDATE: CR appears to agree with me, even as he raises another point: Bernanke used data from other countries to suggest monetary policy was not a huge contributor to the bubble … however, Bernanke didn’t discuss if non-traditional mortgage products contributed to housing bubbles in other countries. This would seem like a key missing part […]
by Linda Beale A quote from Amartya Sen, and my New Year’s Tax Resolutions (for Congress and the Obama Administration) The time between December 30 and January 4 seems to be filled with lists. Along with the ever-present list of “to dos” that haven’t been done and still are hanging around waiting for our attention, […]
This is taking longer than it should. For now, here is a “teaser” graphic, which I suspect is worth much more than 1,000 words: Meanwhile, other (mostly related) thing you may want to read: Brenda Rosser find that everything new is old again. Steve Randy Waldman tells the truth about banks, and Shames the Devil, […]
I gave a guest lecture in Intermediate Macro last year. Normally, I try not to do such things, but I was staring at some data and the offer came at the same time the data started making sense, so I said yes. I gave them a presentation on the similarities and differences between Economics and […]