News
Washington Times | Business, labor groups clash over new organizing rules
Business and labor representatives clashed sharply Monday over a National Labor Relations Board proposal that would greatly shorten the time needed to hold a vote on whether to organize a worksite.
Market Watch | Housing starts rise 14.6% to five-month high
U.S. home builders sharply increased construction in June, according to estimates released Tuesday by the Commerce Department.
CNN: Money | BofA posts $8.8 billion loss
Bank of America posted an $8.8 billion second-quarter loss as the biggest U.S. bank by assets tries to put its disastrous acquisition of Countrywide in the rearview mirror.
Fox Business | Calif. pension funds grow more than 20 percent
Public pension costs have drawn political pressure and efforts to drastically revise the system at the Capitol or at the polls. Public employees have been pushing back, arguing that pensions can be fixed with relatively minor changes to curtail abuses and that the recession's effects would dwindle over time.
Econ Comments
CNN: Money | Tides of March: Did U.S. economy crest this spring?
Did the U.S. economic expansion wilt this past spring, allowing another recession to take root?
Politico | GOP is bad for business
Republicans stress the important economic role of business, but when the chips are really down, they take a walk. They are now the party of “no” when the U.S. economy’s stability, growth and preservation are at stake.
Daily Caller | New urbanism isn’t going to save the economy now or ever
Liberals can sing the praises of an urban lifestyle and talk about herding more Americans — and families — into the city all they want, but as long as they stand foursquare with the government unions that make cities costlier to live in, it amounts to mere posturing.
Washington Times | EDITORIAL: Obama’s gas stunt comes up empty
Type the sentence(s) summarizing the link here.Siphoning oil from strategic reserve fails to cut prices.
Barron's | The Hour Before Dawn
There's reason to be optimistic about home prices in the wake of recent data.
Financial Times | Conditions for the next crisis are firmly in place
Financial crises occur when debt levels are excessive and asset prices fall. The severity of the recession that ensues can then be mitigated by large increases in government deficits and large cuts in interest rates.
Washington Times | RAHN: The end of progress?
Government overregulation threatens innovation.
Bloomberg | Boeing’s Uniquely American Right to Take Flight: Glaeser
The profound role that mobility has played in our country, enabling repeated reinvention, causes me to be deeply worried about the possibility that a National Labor Relations Board complaint will prevent Boeing Co. (BA) from moving plane production from Washington state to South Carolina.
WSJ | The Treasury-Bund Yield Puzzle
Why U.S. and German government bonds remain low—for now.
Cato Institute | A Beacon for US Trade Policy
Indeed, the lack of transparency about the true costs and benefits of trade explains America's increasingly unenlightened policy. But for an American whose government peddles the fallacy that increased exports are the benefits and increased imports the costs of trade liberalisation, developments in Australia offer a beacon that could guide US policy away from the rocky shores.
CNN: Money | Surprise! We still believe the big bad bailout is paying off
Our recent analysis of the U.S. bailout caused quite a ruckus. Here is our response to the critics who say we omitted some key details.
Blogs
Greg Mankiw's Blog | The Always Quotable Larry Summers
Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.
Market Watch | Goldman Sachs slashes economic forecast
Following another week of weak economic data, we have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%. Our forecasts for Q4 and 2012 are under review, but even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8¾% at the end of 2012.
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Weak Growth Is Not Only in Rear-View Mirror
The U.S. economy’s weak growth rate was supposed to end with the first half. After all, temporary drags, particularly high energy costs and disruptions related to the Japanese disaster, were key headwinds last quarter.
Reports
AEI | Is Obama's New Deal Better Than the Old One?
The New Deal failed to reduce unemployment, and the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress since the financial crisis look to be a repeat performance. These similar outcomes seem to rest on a similarity in policies.
Heritage Foundation | Evaluating Federal Social Programs: Finding Out What Works and What Does Not
Federal social programs are rarely evaluated to determine whether they are actually accomplishing their intended purposes. As part of its obligation to spend taxpayers’ dollars wisely, Congress should mandate that experimental evaluations of every federal social program be conducted.
RCM: Wells Fargo | Net Foreign Flows Turn Negative on Decline in Bank Liabilities
Net TIC flows turned negative in May as the decline in bank liabilities far outweighed a small increase in net long-term holdings. Despite all the talk about the U.S. debt ceiling, foreigners continued to buy Treasuries.
