News
USA Today | EU leaders' latest agreement still leaves unfinished work
After all the hype about the do-or-die talks to save the euro, there was a strange absence of urgency about the latest summit of European Union leaders.
Fox Business | More Colleges Offering Tuition Breaks
Recognizing the tight financial situation many American students and their families are facing, a growing number of private and public colleges are offering discounted tuition in an effort to attract more students.
USA Today | Survey: Recession attitudes but Christmas cheer spending
In an extraordinary display of Christmas-time contrast, the CNBC All-America Economic Survey finds that Americans plan robust holiday spending increases this year despite recession-like attitudes about the economy.
WSJ | OECD Points to Mixed Slowdowns
The Paris-based think tank Monday said its leading indicator of economic activity in its 34 members fell to 100.1 in October from 100.4 in September.
Econ Comments
NY Times | To Rethink Government, Start Close to Home
Some of the antipathy may stem from fancy economic theories that say free markets magically render government unnecessary. But much more of it surely results from the annoying experiences that many Americans have had in government offices.
American | The Political Implications of Ignoring Our Own Ignorance
Prudence would dictate trying to find institutional arrangements that minimize the potential risks and costs that any individual can impose on society through his own ignorance.
RCM | Exactly What Is Crony Capitalism, Anyway?
President Obama, progressive politicians, Occupy protestors, and leftist intellectuals are having a field day attacking what they call the failures and excesses of capitalism.
WSJ | Financial Regulation: Worse Than a Crime
In the U.S. mortgage crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, bad policies subsidized bad investments.
Blogs
Calculated Risk | Unofficial Problem Bank list declines to 977 institutions
In 2008, 25 banks failed, 140 banks failed in 2009, 157 in 2010, and only 90 so far in 2011.
Atlantic: McArdle | Growth Is Not an Easy Solution for Europe's Woes
I've seen a bunch of commentators today saying that "the fundamental problem Europe needs to solve is growth, not budget deficits." In some sense this is true--enough growth would solve many of the problems in the periphery.
NRO: The Corner | Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed: A Case Study of Silver Spring, Maryland
Epstein looks at the promises made and the results, before he digs into where and how the money was spent.
Daily Capitalist | Ludwig von Mises on Economic Growth, Denial, and Truth in Europe
Mises knew — and predicted — that a regime of fiat currencies everywhere in the world would not end well. He asserted at the time that this would lead to an era of unprecedented monetary instability, fiscal profligacy that guaranteed retrograde government policies, depressions, and inevitably, social conflict.
