Brad DeLong and Matthew Yglesias report that operation Twist worked, because 30 year bond yields have declined since it was announced. Brad “30y Treasury yield down 13 bps, 2y yield up 5bps. Exactly what you would expect with announcement of twist operation.” So Brad why were you so sure that the 30y yield would not […]

Of the three Financial Services firms that were downgraded yesterday, the market appears to be sending a positive, er, Wells notice. Google Finance provides the details:

As regular—well, obsessive–readers know, I’m stealing a title from the sainthood-destined Michèle Tertilt.  But it seems appropriate—and a better title than “Engaging Boys and Men as Allies for Long-term Change”—for today’s Plenary hosted by Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. We got a taste of this yesterday, on the panel hosted by Robin Roberts (now a […]

by Mike Kimel Recently I had the opportunity to speak to Professor David Cohen’s class on the US Presidency in the Political Science department at the University of Akron. My talk was structured around three questions involving some extremely simple recent economic history. None of the questions were trick questions. The questions appear below. — […]

Brad DeLong cited this passage from Ron Suskind’s latest book on Monday: Both [Christina Romer and Larry Summers], in fact, were concerned by something the president had said in a morning briefing: that he thought that high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. The same meme spread across the economics spectrum: Scott […]

Elaine Kamarck wrote an article in The Washington Monthly’s blog “Ten Miles Square” entitled “NO Time to Go Wobbly on Welfare Reform” Briefly for those who have not clicked the link, the article stresses that TANF (aka welfare) is a very small component of the social welfare safety net (as was AFDC before welfare reform). […]

From my email (with formatting lost): Ask the Experts: What’s Next for the Economy? It’s a big week for the American economy. President Obama announced his plans to reduce the deficit on Monday, and Wednesday afternoon the Federal Reserve announces its new plan to boost growth. Do these proposals make sense? And what do they […]

Lifted from comments on the housing situation by Spencer…Housing vs. Household formation. Of course the point also being…what is going to be the source of growth for US citizens? kharris comments and adds another contributing factor on the housing market: …Banks already have pretty nearly all the housing assets they care to have, thank you […]

This post is late in the game but might be handy. Certainly a lot has been said so far. American Jobs Act 2011 link and transcript of speech by the President.

Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream introduces the two presenters by noting that we are in the “post-Whale oil” strategy for liquid fuels; using algae and biomass technologies. Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme, Inc. opens by thanking his investors and then stating,  “We make oil.”  He declares that oil is not going away, and is […]