Planet Money has a great segment called Get Tougher, Please. Give it a listen. Economist Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute argues the financial reforms are way too wimpy – we need to get tough on the banks. Allowing banks to keep toxic debts on the books for years will create zombies (and stagflation) for …
Category Archives: External & links
9.7 trillion
The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages. 9.7 trillion. That’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and almost enough …
Keynes testing
NPR/PRI has some great stories on the return of Keynes theories, and possibly the very first test of them. This American Life: 373: The New Boss – Stories about what happens when someone new takes over—someone with a vision of how things ought to be. Plus, NPR international economics correspondent Adam Davidson of the Planet …
Spend your way to prosperity
I’ve been meaning to write a post about this, but Caroline Baum has written many of the same points I had in a piece for Bloomberg called “Economic Cures Are Like Booze for an Alcoholic”. “…the U.S. economy was buckling under the weight of the burst housing bubble. The blame game was in full swing, …
Inconvenient Depressions
David A. Rosenberg from Merrill Lynch has released an 11 page document called “Some inconvenient truths”. It is worth a read for its frank discussion of our current economic condition. Depressions are basically long recessions – they can last anywhere from three to seven years, while historically cyclical recessions last 18 months – and tend …