Bailout and Financial Crisis News

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il and U.S. President Barack Obama may not have that much in common politically, but when it comes to playing the role of figurehead, they have a lot of similarities. Both want to get out there and be seen supporting the economy. So we thought, we wonder how much their photo shoots [...]

One of the big “improvements” to the healthcare plan, this time around, is the removal of a special perk for Nebraska that Democrats dangled in order to get Senator Ben Nelson to vote “YES”. The solution actually was to give all states the same perk. But the President has been making a big deal out of the [...]

Paul Krugman writes: Bizarro Health Reform Arguments: As health reform moves to its final, make or break vote… Republicans are still denouncing it as a vast, evil government takeover. But they have a problem: Obamacare is very much like the Massachusetts health reform, which was not only implemented by a Republican governor, but by a [...]

In recent weeks, policy makers from President Barack Obama to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been taking extraordinary measures to remove what they see as a serious impediment to the recovery: A dearth of credit for the small businesses that many economists say must play a leading role in creating new jobs. David Altig, head [...]

Andy Xie is a former Morgan Stanley analyst now living in China ~~~ The biggest policy debate this year has thus far been when and how fast to exit from last year’s stimulus policies. Last year, in a moment of panic over the global financial crisis, central banks and governments poured monetary and fiscal stimulus into the [...]

1) Rebecca Wilder: The end game for Europe: wage cutting and the battle for exports: Latvia’s model: drop wages to increase export income. Greece: drop wages to increase export income. France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, etc., etc. It’s impossible that the whole of the Eurozone will drop wages to increase export income. It’s especially bad for [...]

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would create bigger deficits than advertised every year of the next decade, with the shortfalls totaling $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The nonpartisan agency said yesterday the deficit will remain above 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product for the foreseeable future [...]

1) Andrew Leigh: Permanent Income Inequality: Australia, Britain, Germany, and the United States Compared: This paper uses panel data from four developed nations to estimate permanent income inequality, measured by averaging equivalized household income across multiple years. In general, I find that permanent income inequality has followed similar trends to annual income inequality, rising particularly [...]

As we told you last week, the recovery is already over. Consumers are hunkering down, burdened by real debt, increasingly joblessness and overwhelmingly negative expectations about the future. We fully expect Friday’s jobs report to show that consumers didn’t get things wrong. Things are getting worse again. (If that gets you down, check out our earlier post arguing [...]

Barack Obama gets a surprise visit in the night from ex-Presidents Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Clinton, Ford, Reagan and Carter to get a few pointers about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and why it’s so important. Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Ron Howard, Jim Carrey, Fred Armisen, Darrell Hammond, Dan Aykroyd, [...]

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