News
WSJ | Companies Start to Loosen Grip on Cash
The total year-to-date dividend payout of about $39 billion is up nearly 15% from the same period in 2010, and S&P expects it will reach $225 billion by year-end.
WSJ | Japan's Credit-Rating Paradox
That credit-market paradox reflects the fiscal discipline of some of Japan's best-run companies, while their government has become ever-more profligate over the past decade.
NY Times | Economic Reports for the Week
Scheduled for this week are consumer credit for January (Monday); wholesale trade inventories for January (Wednesday); trade deficit for January and weekly jobless claims (Thursday)…
WSJ | Banks Look to Replace Lost Debit-Card Fees
...now banks are faced with new rules that will restrict how much they can charge merchants for debit transactions, erasing billions of dollars in revenue.
CNN Money | Who's buying homes? The rich
After four straight years of declines, sales of million-dollar homes and condos rose last year in all 20 major metro areas, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
Fox News | Economists Urge Obama Not to 'Overreact' to High Food Prices
Leading advocates for the world’s poorest and hungriest are urging President Obama not to “overreact” to recent spikes in food prices, particularly by imposing export bans on U.S. agricultural products.
Econ Comments
Washington Times | EDITORIAL: High-speed derailed
Florida, New Jersey and Ohio governors reject choo-choo boondoggle.
RCM | Why Social Security Is Welfare
Benefits shift; they're not strictly proportionate to wages but are skewed to favor low-wage earners - a value judgment reflecting who most deserves help; and they aren't paid from workers' own "contributions."
TechCrunch | Why Silicon Valley Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Returning Home
...entrepreneurship is booming in countries that compete with us. And more than half a million doctors, scientists, researchers, and engineers in the U.S. are stuck in “immigration limbo”.
Investors | Healthy Consumer Relying On $1 Trillion Government Fix
...Mike Englund, chief economist at Action Economics, sees trillion-dollar deficits as "a huge head wind for the economy and one of the reasons we are growing so slowly."
WSJ | Still Too Big, Still Can't Fail
The biggest banks are bigger than they were before the last crisis.
CNN Money | Social Security needs to be fixed - So just do it
Social Security is the easiest to fix since, unlike health care, we actually know what will work: It boils down to some combination of benefit reductions and revenue increases.
Blogs
Café Hayek | Dysfunctional
A very informative editorial from the New York Times that gives you some idea of what is going in New York with public employee compensation.
EconLog | Greenspan on the Economy
Type the sentence(s) summarizing the link here.
Marginal Revolution | Democracy in Deficit
Time is no longer on the side of good. I suggest that we confront the nation's fiscal difficulties as soon as possible.
EconLog | Do Labor Unions Promote the Middle Class?
...because the unions drive wages above competitive levels, they cause some of the workers to be put out of work. Many of these workers would have rather driven their own bargain and worked for a lower wage, but they can't do so legally.
Forbes: John Tamny | “Necessary” Bank Bailouts Harm the Economy, Wreck the Banks
Business failure hardly constitutes business disappearance, and the beauty of failure is that it ensures that poorly managed assets are released at frequently low prices to managers with a stated objective to develop those human, mechanical and financial inputs more effectively on the way to growth.
Reports
RCM: Wells Fargo Economics Group | Weekly Economic & Financial Commentary
Solid Week for the Economy, Slight Miss on Jobs.
Cato Institute | Fannie, Freddie, and the Subprime Mortgage Market
What remains in dispute is the role of government — specifically, that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — in expanding the availability of subprime mortgage credit.
