News
Market Watch | Monday's Personal Finance Stories
Data suggest we’re seeing the start of a recovery in the U.S. housing market, yet every week we hear that mortgage interest rates remain at or near record lows. What’s the disconnect?
CNN Money | Wealth implosion: It's not just housing
Americans' net worth collapsed in recent years, but don't blame the housing market for it all.
National Journal | EPA: New Soot Standard Can Easily Be Met Because of Other Clean-Air Rules
A top Obama administration official said an air-pollution standard the Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Friday will be easily met by 99 percent of the country because of the suite of clean-air rules EPA has already finalized.
WSJ | Spain Back in Cross Hairs
The brief afterglow from Greece's vote Sunday to try to remain in the euro was quickly extinguished by a cascade of bad news out of Spain that again rattled faith in the currency bloc's ability to support its most troubled members.
Econ Comments & Analysis
Washington Times | Obama is not doing fine
President Obama’s claim that “the private sector is doing fine” is sure to be repeated over and over and over again the next few months. And the White House will continue to argue that the president’s comments were taken out of context. That’s missing the point. The context is the problem.
WSJ | The Euro's Global Security Fallout
The crisis of the euro zone is a geopolitical as well as an economic event. While Europe may yet find a path out of its economic quagmire, it will turn inward for some time as it reorganizes some of its core institutions. The world will not stand still while this happens.
Politico | America must tap into Alaska’s Arctic oil
North Dakota has now overtaken Alaska in oil production, again demonstrating shale oil’s ascendance — and importance — in the nation’s oil supply. I lost a bet — and owe my North Dakota counterpart a salmon dinner.
AEI | The panic and money-market funds
To believe that the taxpayers are standing behind money-market funds is to endorse the underlying theory of the Dodd-Frank Act. The supposed instability of unregulated markets is the left's basis for regulating financial markets, including money-market funds.
Washington Times | Obama’s union bailout
We all know how the Obama administration likes to portray the auto bailout: A generous infusion of money enabled the government to save General Motors and Chrysler. Jobs that otherwise would have disappeared were rescued by this taxpayer-funded largesse. It was expensive, but we had no choice.
Washington Post | Avoiding a global catastrophe
Once again good news has had a half-life of less than 24 hours. Just as news of Spain’s bank bailout rallied markets for only a few hours, a Greek election outcome that was as good as could have been hoped did not buoy markets for even a day.
Smart Money | The Economic Police State
Taking a page from the United States, Argentina announced plans last week to stimulate its stagnant economy with no-cost housing loans. The idea is to boost growth by intervening in the supposedly "free" economy. It won't work.
Blogs
WSJ | Vital Signs: Slowing U.S. Manufacturing
Factory activity in the U.S. has been slowing. Manufacturing output declined 0.4% in May from April, the second drop in three months. While output is still rising compared with a year ago, the rate of growth has slowed amid weakening demand for U.S. products overseas and a cooling domestic economy. That leaves the recovery more vulnerable to shocks from abroad.
Reason Foundation | Highway Construction As Stimulus? Not So Fast
President Obama is sending strong signals that he wants more stimulus spending to keep the American economy out of recession, even if the White House is not saying it explicitly. The president's "the private sector is fine" moment clearly emphasized a perceived need for state, local, and federal governments to increase spending to pick up the slack in an anemic economy.
WSJ | Home-Builder Confidence Hits Five-Year High
U.S. home builders’ sentiment increased in June to the highest level in more than five years, the latest in a series of encouraging signs for the housing market.
Bleeding Heart Libertarians | Factual Free-Market Fairness
To a discussion by political philosophers a mere fact woman like me, an economic historian trained in the 1960s as a transportation economist, has really only one thing to contribute. It is, to slightly modify Cromwell’s imprecation to the Scottish Presbyterians in 1650, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be [factually] mistaken.”
National Review | Morning Outrage: Amtrak Edition
Via Gary Leff of View from the Wing: Amtrak is sending emails to inform customers that they will get a discount on their train tickets if they donate money to organizations that will then lobby for more Amtrak subsidies.
The American | A nation of takers: Are Americans getting more than they paid for?
On Wednesday, June 20, Nicholas Eberstadt of AEI will delineate the debt trend lines, exposing how over time, Americans have increasingly stuck their hands in the government “cookie jar,” voting for more benefits than they are willing to pay for.
