Monthly Archives: August 2010

I think it’s very useful to split the question of the housing bubble from the broken financial markets in evaluating the crisis, and then examine how each influenced each other. The financial markets are supposed to aggregate information across a … Continue reading →

So after being in limbo for many, many months, all my stuff has finally been shipped to the East Coast. And this allows me to go through books that have been in storage for over half a year. One of … Continue reading →

Well this is fascinating. Looking at the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, which has 7 editions online starting from 1995, the chapters on financial regulation is a fascinating walk down memory lane. They aren’t in every edition, but they are in … Continue reading →

There’s a recent exchange between two writers at the Economist’s Democracy in America blog that comes after a previous exchange about the role of inequality and the role of the government in the recent financial crisis. The first by M.S. … Continue reading →

David Dayen at FireDogLake is doing a great job with a series Portrait of HAMP Failure (Four Parts so far, Part One, Two, Three, Four.) The key is in the title of the first post: “It Makes Your Financial Situation … Continue reading →

I’d highly recommend Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece, Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama, about David and Charles Koch, lifelong libertarians that have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes. … Continue reading →

Steve Waldman wrote up last Monday’s Treasury meeting in a must read post. I wish I had written it, it captures both the meeting and how Treasury looked to people on our side of the meeting. When it comes to … Continue reading →

We’ve had a lot of exciting feedback and commentary on our latest paper The Boom Not The Slump: The Right Time For Austerity, including discussion from Paul Krugman, Brad Delong, James Ledbetter at Slate, Richard Exell at Touchstone Blog, Gregory … Continue reading →

On Monday I took part in a blogger meeting with several members of the Treasury Department. Alex Tabarrok has a writeup, as does Yves Smith and John Lounsbury has an extensive one as well. First off, here’s a picture of … Continue reading →

This can’t be serious, can it? H/t Yglesias, National Review writes that Obama needs to embrace Reagan era pain caucus solutions in their piece titled Obama: More a Carter than a Reagan (my bold): Both arguments miss the important ways … Continue reading →