News
WSJ | OPEC Cuts Demand Forecast
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Tuesday further trimmed its forecasts for oil demand in 2011 and 2012 and warned it could cut the outlook again amid growing unease over the global economy.
Fox News | The History of Trade Agreements in the House
Trade pacts and their political volatility date back to the approval of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. At that time, the concept of broadening trade was anathema to many "pro-labor" Democrats.
Econ Comments
Washington Times | RAHN: Unthinking financial regulators
The shocking thing is that more than one-quarter of all American households are unbanked or underbanked and that this number is rising, not falling, largely because of ill-thought-out financial regulation and policies.
WSJ | Avoiding Smoot-Hawley Redux
My Senate colleagues shouldn't be provoking a trade war with China.
Bloomberg | Business Class: Policy Uncertainty Is Choking Recovery
The recovery from the recession of 2008-09 remains anemic. Job growth has stalled, unemployment stands above 9 percent, and there are renewed fears of another output drop.
WSJ | The Return of Rational Expectations
A pair of worthy Nobel prizes in economics.
Washington Times | EKINS: Key to entitlement reform: Full refund
Taxpayers will go along if they don’t get robbed in the process.
WSJ | A Nobel for Non-Keynesians
People's expectations about government policy make it difficult for officials to affect the economy in the ways they intend to.
Blogs
Daily Capitalist | The Welfare Tipping Point
e are quickly approaching a tipping point where the have not are equal to the haves. That is bad for a democracy where voters can vote themselves benefits from the government.
Café Hayek | Poor Sales
Saying that poor sales is the biggest problem facing small business is like saying that the biggest problem facing the economy is that it’s not doing very well. It has no content.
Daily Capitalist | Too Big To Fail?
Over the years he had drawn a line through the investment houses as they disappeared through M&A or failure. About two-thirds were gone. Nothing new I guess.
Independent Institute | Important New Evidence on Regime Uncertainty
The idea of regime uncertainty had sound economic theory and substantial empirical evidence to support it from the beginning, and a great deal of additional evidence has accumulated over the past three years.
Calculated Risk | Unofficial Problem Bank list declines to 983 Institutions
Here is the unofficial problem bank list for Oct 7, 2011.
Marginal Revolution | Which countries target their welfare spending most effectively?
Australia has the most “target efficient” system of social security benefits of any OECD country. For each dollar of spending on benefits our system reduces income inequality by about 50 per cent more than the United States, Denmark or Norway, twice as much as Korea, two and a half times as much as Japan or Italy, and three times as much as France.
Calculated Risk | Schedule for Week of Oct 9th
The key economic releases this week are the September retail sales report on Friday, and the August trade balance report on Thursday.
Daily Capitalist | The Great Recession Never Ended
It has been the position of the Daily Capitalist that we really haven’t seen the end of the Great Recession, and one important measure of that, perhaps the one that really matters the most, is that unemployment remains high.
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Sargent, Sims Win Economics Nobel
The economics Nobel was awarded this morning to Thomas J. Sargent of New York University and Christopher A. Sims of Princeton University for their work on how to assess the effects of policy changes on the economy.
NRO: The Corner | Awesome!
Forbes’ Paul Roderick Gregory has some advice for Obama’s Department of Energy from a former Soviet planner:
Reports
Heritage Foundation | Global Trade Freedom Needs a Boost
Worldwide, the average trade freedom score fell slightly, from 74.8 to 74.5. This small drop is not necessarily cause for alarm because trade freedom remains at the second-highest level since The Heritage Foundation began tracking it in 1995.
Mercatus Center | Mercatus Center Do Subsidies Justify Retaliatory Protectionism?
Imposing retaliatory protectionist measures risks encouraging rent-seeking behaviour. In practice, it is impossible to define exactly what behaviour does and does not amount to the grant of subsidies by the government of an exporting country.
