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Monday, October 31, 2011

Budget

News                                                                                                                             
WSJ | Census Confronts Budget Ax
Washington politicians often battle over what economic statistics mean and what to do about them. Now, they are fighting about the statistics themselves.
Daily Finance | Banks Back Away from New Fees, Focus on Cost Cutting Instead
Still, the banks are looking for ways to make up for the revenue lost under new federal regulations enacted earlier this month, and to compensate for low interest rates.
WSJ | For Europe Bailout Fund, Next Stop Is Japan
The head of Europe's bailout fund, Klaus Regling, takes his tour of potential Asian investors to Japan next, after Beijing proved unwilling to open its checkbook until European leaders could offer more details about their plan to save the euro zone.

Econ Comments                                                                                                             
RCM | The Supercommittee Isn't Making Super Cuts
Budget: Given all the hoopla, you'd think the deficit Supercommittee was hacking away at the size of government without mercy. In fact, even the $1.2 trillion in hoped-for cuts will do nothing to attack our long-term deficits.
National Journal | Gang of Six Members: Super Committee Can Still ‘Go Big’
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va.  and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., leaders of the bipartisan “Gang of Six,” on Monday continued to push a "go big" $4 trillion deficit reduction plan, instead of the $1.2 trillion the super committee has been tasked with cutting.
Telegraph | Why the latest eurozone bail-out is destined to fail within weeks
My sincere hope is that collective and decisive action by the eurozone's large member states will stabilize global markets, at least for a while, so allowing the global economy to catch its breath.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
Atlantic: McArdle | The Incredible Shrinking Supercommittee
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a prominent--and not normally excessively optimistic--budget expert.  This person offered me two reasons to hope that the Supercommittee in charge of finding budget cuts would choose to go big rather than go home.
Heritage Foundation | Myths of Austerity Failures
Small wonder, then, why the economy didn’t quickly recover like it did after the downturn of 1920. Hoover followed the opposite path. Rather than cutting government to let the free market grow, he grew government, which shrank the free market and staved off recovery.

Reports                                                                                                                         
NBER | Fiscal Multipliers in Recession and Expansion
We also consider the responses of other key macroeconomic variables and find that these responses generally vary over the cycle as well, in a pattern consistent with the varying impact on GDP.