News
WSJ | Home Market Takes a Tumble
Turnaround More Distant After 3% Drop, Steepest Quarterly Decline Since 2008.
CNBC | Home Values See Biggest Drop Since 2008
The number of homeowners under wter or those who owe more on the mortgage than their house is currently worth - amounted to 28.4 percent of single famly homeowners represneting a peak since Zillow began calculating data in 2009.
WSJ | OECD Points to Varying Growth
The world's largest economies are set to grow at different speeds, with the U.S., Germany and Russia performing strongly, while Italy, Brazil and India will experience slower growth than they are used to, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's composite leading indicator.
Fox News | Gas Prices expected to drop 50 cents by summer
After rocketing up 91 cents since January, including 44 straight days of increases, the national average this past week stopped just shy of $4 a gallon and has retreated to under $3.98. A steady decline is expected to follow.
Market Watch | Gas price spike impact to be in week’s data
It’s not a new story, but an unfolding one — just how much the spike in gasoline prices is impacting the U.S. economy.
Econ Comments
Washington Post | For the young, there’s a silver lining in the housing bust
The National Association of Realtors routinely publishes a housing “affordability” index, which judges the ability of median families to buy the median-price home at prevailing interest rates. By this measure, existing homes are the most affordable since the index started in 1970.
Daily Caller | The audacity of irresponsibility: Confronting the fallout of a failing economy
According to Gallup, Americans' confidence in the economy reached a new low for 2001 last week. A mere 34 percent of Americans said in a recent CBS/Times poll that they approve of the way President Obama is handling the economy; the lowest point since he took office.
National Journal | Markey: Speculators and Manipulators to Blame for High Energy Prices
After the House passed the first of three bills to speed up and expand offshore drilling on Thursday, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey says that the only way to combat high energy prices is to crack down on speculators, deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and put a clean-energy policy in place.
Washington Times | ZYWICKI: Bureau of Consumer Protection must put consumers first
Congress should reform the reform before it is too late.
RCM | Another Nail In the Keynesian Coffin
The coffin of Keynesianism has so many nails in it now that it is practically surfaced in steel. The notion that government deficits "stimulate" demand, has been proved wrong so many times, and in so many ways, that you would have to be Paul Krugman to still believe in it. However, in its April 28 news release on 1Q2011 GDP, the BEA drove yet another factual wooden stake into Keynesianism's vampire heart - a stake that no one seems to have noticed.
AEI: The American | Prosperity, Depression, and Progress
Any historical study that focuses on the Great Depression is bound to ask what parallels there are with the current period of prolonged high unemployment.
Blogs
Calculated Risk | Schedule for Week of May 8th
The key reports this week are April Retail Sales
on Thursday, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday and the monthly Trade Balance report on Wednesday.
Econlog | Anecdotes of an Informal Economy
My guess is that those in the informal economy do not get to send their children to elite primary and secondary schools, and they have little in the way of health insurance. But otherwise, they enjoy what I call Diamond Age access to the more basic goods and a few luxuries.
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Consumers Increase Credit-Card Debt
U.S. consumers in March increased their credit-card debt for the second time since the financial crisis flared, giving a sign of hope that consumer spending could boost an economic recovery that has lost some steam.
Calculated Risk | Unofficial Problem Bank list at 983 Institutions
Here is the unofficial problem bank list for May 6, 2011.
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Number of the Week: Class of 2011, Most Indebted Ever
$22,900: Average student debt of newly minted college graduates.
Reports
NBER | What Do Consumers Believe About Future Gasoline Prices?
Policy-relevant inference hinges on this specification, yet there is little direct evidence on the nature of consumer beliefs. We provide such evidence by analyzing two decades of data on gasoline price expectations from the Michigan Survey of Consumers. We find that average consumer beliefs are indistinguishable from a no-change forecast.
RCM: Wells Fargo | Nonfarm Employment Surges in April
Nonfarm payrolls rose a solid 244,000 in April, despite continued government layoffs. The household data were not as rosy, showing a drop in employment and a rise in the unemployment rate to 9.0 percent.
