News
FOX News | Moody's cuts debt ratings of 28 Spanish banks
The rating agency said that it is cutting its views on the debt issued by 28 Spanish banks, including international heavyweights Banco Santander and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.
CNBC | Gas Prices Are a Silver Lining for Wobbly Economy
The national average for regular gasoline has fallen 9 cents in the past week to $3.41, according to AAA. Gasoline was $3.65 a month ago and $3.935 a gallon when it peaked in April.
CNN Money | New home sales jump 7.6% in May
The housing market got some good news on Monday, as the government reported that sales of new homes rose 7.6% in May.
Bloomberg | Biggest U.S. Banks Curb Loans as Regional Firms Fill Gap
The biggest U.S. banks are extending less credit amid a faltering economic recovery as regional lenders step in to fill the gap.
NY Times | Report Predicts Huge Gap in Educated Workers
By 2020, there will be about 38 million to 40 million too few college and university graduates to satisfy the demands of the global labor market, a report issued this month has found
WSJ | New-Home Sales Reach 2-Year High
Sales of newly built homes climbed to the highest level in two years, driven by limited supply of previously owned homes and record-low mortgage rates.
Econ Comments & Analysis
WSJ | Shareholders Can Cure Too Big to Fail
There are many reasons people give for breaking up financial institutions that are "too big to fail." It would reduce their complexity, making it less likely they would fail in first place. And ending the government's implicit subsidies to these behemoths means they would no longer enjoy a lower cost of borrowing funds—a competitive advantage that now leads them to grow bigger.
NY Times | Fixing College
Setting aside the specifics of the Virginia drama, university leaders desperately need to transform how colleges do business. Higher education must make up for the mistakes it made in what I call the industry’s “lost decade,” from 1999 to 2009.
Mercatus | Beware the Surge: "Midnight Regulations"
History teaches us that the outcome of presidential elections is rarely certain, with one exception. A change in administration will be followed by a “lame duck” session, during which politicians are all-but freed from normal political constraints.
WSJ | Smearing Small Business
On the eve of the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare, and with the Justices now presumably beyond political pressure, the liberal intimidation campaign has moved on to other targets. The latest is the small business lobby for having dared to join 26 states in challenging the law.
AEI | The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: Who will guarantee this guarantor?
Defined-benefit pension plans are very difficult to finance successfully: That is why so many of them, both private and public, are deeply underfunded. It is also why they are a disappearing financial species.
Mercatus | Baselines
For more than three decades, executive branch agencies have been required to conduct regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) for all regulations deemed to be “economically significant.”
Blogs
National Review | Scott Winship on Income Mobility: Good News Edition
This is a great interview of Brookings Institution’s Scott Winship by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV about income mobility in America. As Winship’s work demonstrates, mobility is not declining in spite of evidence that income inequality is indeed growing (especially at the top end of the income distribution).
AEI | Graphic of the Day: The economic catastrophe of a euro breakup
Well, this wouldn’t be good at all
Library of Economics | Mexico's Economic Growth
In the United States, the image of Mexico is abysmal and largely wrong. The average American seems to believe that Mexico is a destitute, quasi-socialist nation with rampant drug violence that is sending waves of illegal immigrants to the United States.
