News
Market Watch | U.S. home prices fall 1.1% in February
U.S. home prices fell in February for the seventh straight month, according to a closely followed index released Tuesday, with the beleaguered housing market approaching a double-dip recession.
NYT | Government, Too, Has Trouble Selling Buildings
The government owns or manages more than 900,000 buildings or other structures across the country — office buildings, courthouses, warehouses and other property types — making it the nation’s largest landlord. But like the former N.I.H. building, about 14,000 are no longer needed and are costly to maintain. An additional 55,000 are regarded as underutilized.
Market Watch | Orders for durable goods rise 2.5% in March
Orders for long-lasting U.S. goods bounced back in March, spurred by higher demand for transportation equipment, computers and defense-related products.
Fox News | A look at economic developments around the globe
A look at economic developments and activity in major stock markets around the world Tuesday:
WSJ | Dow Rises 115.49, New 3-Year High
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 115.49 points, or 0.9%, to finish at 12595.37, a fresh three-year high. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index rose 11.99 points, or 0.9%, to 1347.24, while the Nasdaq Composite added 21.66 points, or 0.8%, to 2847.54.
Econ Comments
Fox News | A snapshot of the AP Economy Survey results
The quarterly AP Economy Survey drew upon forecasts from 42 economists. Here are their average predictions:
FP | More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World
For many in the West, poverty is almost synonymous with hunger. Indeed, the announcement by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 2009 that more than 1 billion people are suffering from hunger grabbed headlines in a way that any number of World Bank estimates of how many poor people live on less than a dollar a day never did.
Politico | George W. Bush: Drill more to lower gas prices
"I would suggest Americans understand how supply and demand works. And if you restrict supplies of crude, the price of oil is going to go up and it affects gasoline".
Washington Times | EDITORIAL: EPA suburban sprawl brawl
Global-warming agency’s carbon footprint deepens in greener pastures.
AEI | Can the Dodd-Frank Act Defeat Financial Crises?
This natural cyclic laity is far more powerful than the thousands or tens of thousands of pages of regulations, which will be the principal memorial of the act.
Heritage Foundation | Time to Face Economic Reality
The first step to recovery, they say, is accepting that you have a problem. In that case, it’s welcome news to hear more and more politicians talking about the problems being brought on by our runaway spending.
Blogs
The Economist: Free excahnge | First-quarter GDP in line with forecasts
For once, the soothsayers were right. Britain's GDP rose by 0.5% in the first quarter compared with the previous three months, in line with forecasts. Most of the economy had a decent enough start to the year: services output was up by 0.9% and manufacturing grew by 1%.
Cato@Liberty | Obama’s Economic Policies Create Misery
The public has finally started to give President Obama’s economic policies a big “thumbs down”. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who is familiar with the Misery Index.
The Economist: Free exchange | Bad housing news still isn't that bad
The latest Case-Shiller home price data, for the month of February, are now out, and headlines are sure to be gloomy. Year-on-year, the 20-city index dropped 3.3% in February, down slightly more than in the previous month.
Cato@Liberty | Tina Brown and the Economics of Recession
Talking about royal weddings on NPR, Tina Brown says that there’s high unemployment in Britain, as there was in 1981, because of Conservative governments’ budget cuts (transcript edited to match broadcast):
Reports
Heritage Foundation | Ten Economic Lessons from Europe for the U.S. President
As the U.S. tackles its own fiscal situation, here are 10 lessons that it can learn from the European experience.
RCM: Wells Fargo | Consumers Less Despondent in April
U.S. consumer confidence picked up slightly to 65.4 in April from an upwardly revised reading of 63.8 in March. The low reading comes as little surprise given stubbornly high unemployment and rising gas prices.
