William Black writes this post Fannie and Freddie’s Managers bought Nonprime Paper for the same Reason Merrill Did: (hat tip Rebecca) This subdivides into four arguments: the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Congress’ rejection of an administration proposal to give OFHEO greater supervisory powers, specifically, the power to place Fannie and Freddie in receivership, the ability […]

by Linda Beale Illinois’ deficit reduction scheme crossposted with Ataxingmatter States have generally suffered during this economic crisis much the way most people have–there’s been less money coming in as sales receipts slowed during the recession, more services needed as many become homeless, insuranceless and generally more vulnerable during the recession, and bills have continued […]

Via Forbes the new report by United Health Foundation notes that the health of the population of each state are: …published by the United Health Foundation and funded by insurer UnitedHealth Group ( UNH – news – people ), measures residents of all 50 U.S. states on 22 activities that can predict future health, such […]

As the title indicates, this will be a more than usually confused post.The stimulus was the now famous grief over elementary fairness which errupted when “[Judge] Scott Fairgrieve of Nassau County District Court, wrote that ‘swearing to false statements reflects poorly on the profession [of law] as a whole” and fined lawyer Steven J Baum […]

One of the best rules in mathematics is that, to determine the value of all the variables, you need only as many distinct equations as you have variables. (previous sentence edited for clarity.) So let’s combine a couple of recent articles (h/t Mark Thoma for the first, Digby for the second.) Richard Florida finds three […]

Even though Europe is on the forefront of global bond news these days, I’d like to revisit the US Treasury market. Specifically, I’ll look at the Canadian-US bond spreads, which tell an interesting tale of Fed purchases and US deficit fears. First, the Canadian over US government bond spreads for two longer term issues, 10yr […]

David Neiwert (h/t Rebecca Lesses) doesn’t quite get it right: There will be a lot of hand-wringing in the coming days over the shooting of Rep. Giffords this morning at a constituent event — some of it, almost certainly, from the folks at Fox, who will wonder aloud how this kind of thing could happen. […]

by Mike Kimel The Tax Rate that Maximizes Economic Growth, Part 3… With Gov’t Spending, Money Supply and DemographicsCross posted at the Presimetrics blog. Today I will build a model that explains over three quarters of the annual movement in real GDP between 1929 and the present. The model depends on marginal tax rates, government […]

I am sick today and had to cancel plans with a friend tonight. I decided to look at Eurozone unemployment rates to pass the miserable time. According to the Friday Eurostat press release, The euro area1 (EA16) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 10.1% in November 2010, unchanged compared with October4. It was 9.9% in November 2009. […]