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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Tyler Cowen can count: In sum, maybe three percent expected inflation conflicts with the desire to rapidly recapitalize banks through maintaining a wide interest rate spread. Maybe we need that zero nominal short rate or at least the Fed thinks we do…. I also regard this as a somewhat gruesome hypothesis. It means that “Main […]

The WSJ collects reactions to the release of the latest Case-Shiller index. Let’s look at two, just for fun: One in four mortgages are currently underwater. Foreclosure and delinquency rates, which hit a record high at the end of the third quarter of 2009, are therefore likely to continue to rise, perhaps sharply. In addition […]

…and it’s a world of dread and fear. May it stay outside your window next year and beyond.

Per the Health at a Glance Chart Set, Powerpoint, available here: All OECD countries have achieved universal or near-universal health care coverage, except Turkey, Mexico and the United States And it’s even more impressive when you go to Slide 36 (whose header is quoted above) and realise that the Public Coverage in those three states […]

Now that I know we’re just members of the “Peanut Gallery,”* let this random links post work as a placeholder for longer posts as we prepare for the “holiday”: Shorter Mark Thoma at Marketwatch: If you can’t build a better model, best to reappoint a man who doesn’t think he has to do half of […]