Monthly Archives: February 2012

I, for one, really like the new emphasis conservatives are putting on so-called “social issues” over economic issues. When Rick Santorum says that he is worried about Satan attacking America, I believe that he believes that.  His worry that Satan … Continue reading →

A quick data dump post. Karl Smith gets this right: “If you look across the demographic survey’s what looks to be the biggest effect of the recession has been to delay adulthood for folks born around 1990.  Rather than graduating … Continue reading →

In Iceland, rock-throwing brought criminal justice to the financial sector, wrote down debts healing balance-sheets and lead to a strong recovery out of a terrible economic situation. Omar R. Valdimarsson, who has been covering Iceland’s recovery for Bloomberg, has this … Continue reading →

There’s a mini-debate going on over the relationship between the housing crash and weak demand. As Cardiff Garcia of FT Alphaville recently summarized it: “This reminded us of the debate last year about whether the sluggishness in consumer spending was the result … Continue reading →

Sarah Jaffe has an article up about where or not Congress is going to let the interest rate on student loans double this year.   They are currently at 3.4%, and they are set to go back to 6.8%.  Recommended. … Continue reading →

[Mike here.  Friends of the blog Josh Mason, of the blog slackwire, and Arjun Jayadev, former Roosevelt Institute fellow and economist at Umass-Boston, have an interesting new paper out on the growth of household debt over the past 30 years. … Continue reading →

Several people have been writing about John Cochrane’s post on Federal Reserve independence, but few have mentioned what is actually making Cochrane mad.  Why does Cochrane feel something has gone terribly wrong?  Here’s a quick scan: Led by the White House, … Continue reading →

Will Wilkinson has a post at the Economist Democracy in America blog - Taking welfare and hating it - responding to the big New York Times story about people’s conflicts with the welfare state, a story that we covered here.  It’s worth reading … Continue reading →

Are you watching Up With Chris Hayes?  It’s really good.  There was a discussion last week about what the GOP will do if the economy speeds up its recovery.  It was a good discussion of the bind that the Republicans … Continue reading →

I just saw a tweet from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (@AtlantaFed) noting that they publish daily deflation probabilities that it backs out of TIPS prices.  There are many reasons why we should be worried about deflation in a Great Depression like … Continue reading →