News
FOX Business | Pending Home Sales Fall in October
Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes fell for a fifth straight month in October, hitting a 10-month low and adding to signs of cooling in the housing market.
Washington Times | Obama administration nears trade agreement with Asia
The Obama administration is close to completing a major trade agreement with a handful of Asian countries, including Japan.
FOX Business | Economists Cut 4Q U.S. Economic Forecasts
Economists trimmed their forecasts for U.S. economic growth in the final quarter of the year and the first three months of 2014 but predicted a slightly higher rate of job growth over the next four quarters.
Econ Comments & Analysis
Real Clear Markets | The New Corporatism In American Capitalism
The recent release of Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps' book Mass Flourishing (2013) may be serendipitous, but Phelps' analytic insights definitely add critical perspective on the recent firestorm of business associations' criticism against Tea Party-backed congressional Republicans blamed for the October partial shutdown of the Federal government.
Politico | A Tale of Two Purple States
Republican and Democratic strategists are anxiously awaiting the final results of the excruciatingly close Virginia attorney general’s race, where votes are still being counted. Republicans are already dejected about losing the governor’s mansion in Richmond, and giving up the AG spot would mean that every statewide office in Virginia is now held by a Democrat for the first time in four decades. But the GOP should take heart and learn an important lesson heading into 2014 by comparing its failure in the Old Dominion to what has transpired in neighboring North Carolina, another battleground state that, politically, shares Virginia’s reddish-purple hue.
Real Clear Markets | China's Growth Is In Peril, As Is Its Economy
It has been only a few years since China was widely regarded as an unstoppable economic colossus. For three decades, its economy grew about 10 percent annually; China seemed to be gliding through the global economic storm. Well, maybe not. Many economists - Chinese and foreign - think China's economic model is unworkable.
Real Clear Markets | A Shale Gas Boom In Its Infancy Signals Positive Growth
In the summer of 2013, Liberty - a combined cycle power plant in Pennsylvania- placed an order with Siemens Energy for a delivery of two power blocks. The order, which has a total value of approximately $400 million, includes two H-class gas turbines, two steam turbines, two generators and two heat recovery steam generators, as well as electrical equipment and control systems.
AEI | Stop blaming 'market failure'
Even as the American economy continues to struggle in the Great Recession’s aftermath, Americans continue to blame President George W. Bush and the Republicans for causing the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.
Blogs
WSJ | Why Are Colleges Seeing Anemic Tuition Growth?
Anemic net tuition growth is plaguing nearly half of the nation’s colleges, according to a Moody’s Investors Service survey released today. The report spells more hard times ahead for a growing segment of the nation’s schools, which are enduring the first significant and prolonged drop in the number of high school graduates in decades.
The Economist | Economic hazards
The danger for the rest of us from his death, said the BBC’s controversial "That Was the Week" last Saturday, is not that policies will be consciously changed. The danger is rather “that the world liberal movement, which he led, may now become blurred." Nowhere could this risk be greater, because more easily blurrable, than in Mr Johnson‘s unsought surrogate task of world economic leadership.
Library of Economics | GDP: A Bad Measure of Well-Being
Picture this: The U.S. government finally sells the Postal Service. As with other functions moved from the government to the private sector, the privatized post office does what the government did for about half the cost. So, with prices correspondingly lower, people spend roughly half as much as before on mail--which frees them to spend the difference on other desirable things.
WSJ | World Trade Volume up in Third Quarter
The volume of world trade rose in September and in the third quarter, a sign that the global economy is picking up.
