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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

General Economics

News                                                                                                                             
Bloomberg | Bernanke Saves Companies $700 Billion as Verizon Leads Sales
America’s companies, from Apple Inc. (AAPL) to Verizon Communications Inc., are saving about $700 billion in interest payments with the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented stimulus.
CNN Money | 15% of Americans living in poverty
Years after the Great Recession ended, 46.5 million Americans are still living in poverty, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday.
Bloomberg | Home Starts Weaker Than Forecast Highlight Risk for Fed: Economy
Builders began work on fewer U.S. homes than projected in August, highlighting the risk that rising borrowing costs will hurt a mainstay of the expansion as Federal Reserve policy makers consider reducing stimulus.


Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Bloomberg |
The American Myth of Cheap Oil and Gas

The exporting of oil and liquefied natural gas is part of the biggest story hidden in plain sight: how the U.S. is squandering the strategic advantages of cheap fuel and competitive manufacturing in favor of an energy-export policy that has no larger economic, political, environmental or moral rationale.
WSJ | Peter Wallison: Five Years Later: Don't Mention the Feds
Washington and the media are peddling a narrative that discounts the government's role in the financial crisis.
Washington Times | The Mismeasure of Poverty
Lowering poverty means both recognizing the successes of safety net programs we now have and devising new policies that can spread the gains generated by economic growth.
Bloomberg | CEO Expectations for U.S. Economy Ease as Headwinds Persist
The Business Roundtable’s economic outlook index dropped to 79.1 in the third quarter from a one-year high of 84.3 in the previous three months, the Washington-based trade group said today.
Forbes | Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%
An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive.

Health Care

News                                                                                                                             
CNN Money | 48 million Americans without health insurance
The share of uninsured people decreased to 15.4%, from 15.7% a year earlier, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday. Some 48 million people were uninsured in 2012, which was not statistically different from the prior year.
Politico | HHS: Obamacare premiums to cost less
More than half of uninsured Americans will have health care options under Obamacare that cost less than $100 a month, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
Heritage Foundation | Health Care Spending Crisis Coming; Obamacare Adding Fuel to the Fire
As the existing entitlements are still on track to bankrupt taxpayers, Obamacare’s spending additions make matters far worse, to say the least.

Monetary

News                                                                                                                             
CNN Money | Will the Fed send mortgage rates higher?
Housing market experts are keeping a close eye on the Federal Reserve as they anxiously await word on whether the agency will start pulling back on its controversial stimulus program, known as quantitative easing.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
LA Times | Forget too big to fail: Some banks now too small to succeed
Small banks are finding it increasingly tough to survive, in part because of the cost of complying with regulations stemming from the financial crisis.
Fox Business | Taper Wednesday? Fed Decision on Tap
The Federal Reserve is widely expected today to announce the beginning of the end of its easy-money policies, likely scaling back a bit its monthly bond purchases known as quantitative easing.
CNN Money | The trillion-dollar lesson we'd rather not learn again
It's up to the government to put in place reasonable brakes to change the way mega-banks operate. So far, regulators haven't proven they are up to the task.
Real Clear Markets | At Long Last, The Chained CPI's Time Has Come
Moving to the chained CPI is not the perfect textbook way to change the annual tax and benefit adjustments - a different approach would probably be chosen in the ivory tower. But, if we're looking for practical steps to chip away at the long-run fiscal gap, the chained CPI is a good place to start.
Cato Institute | Four Reasons Not To Worry About The Fed’s Taper
Worries about the taper are hugely overblown for at least four reasons:

Blogs                                                                                                                             
Economist: Free Exchange | Stagnation for everyone
Since the late 1990s, however, incomes across the income spectrum have stagnated and declined, from the 10th percentile right on up to the 95th.
Market Watch | What’s quantitative easing? Most Americans haven’t a clue
A Reuters poll of 857 adult Americans, taken between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16, found that only 27% percent could pick out the correct definition of QE from five possible answers.
WSJ: Real Economics | What to Expect From the Fed Today
Fed officials are likely to emphasize they’re moving slowly and carefully even if they do decide to start pulling back on their signature bond-buying program, and will also seek to reassure investors that short-term interest rates will stay low well into the future.

Taxes

News                                                                                                                             
Politico | Bob Goodlatte to deliver online sales tax plan
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte is expected to release a series of principles on Wednesday, outlining concerns and priorities for a bill that would allow online retailers to collect sales tax.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
NBER | Do the Laws of Tax Incidence Hold? Point of Collection and the Pass-through of State Diesel Taxes
In this paper, we estimate in the context of state diesel fuel taxes how the incidence of a quantity tax depends on the point of tax collection, where the level of the supply chain responsible for remitting the tax varies across states and over time.

Employment

News                                                                                                                             
Washington Times | Government job cuts create a historically slow recession recovery

The biggest downsizing of state and local government in modern history has proved to be a big drag on the U.S. economy since 2009 and a primary reason the four-year-long recovery is more sluggish than other recoveries since World War II, economists say.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
Café Hayek | Seeking Answers from Minimum-Wage Proponents
Here are some questions for those who feel that an increase in the legislated minimum wage is likely to improve the economic lot of low-skilled workers – or at least likely enough to improve the economic lot of low-skilled workers to justify serious scholarly discussion of raising the minimum wage.

Budget

News                                                                                                                             
National Journal | On the Budget, Murray Keeps Talking
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has attempted to go to conference on the Senate Democratic budget more than a dozen times this year. Each time Republicans have objected, worried that their House colleagues would agree to a deal on funding the government, raising the debt ceiling, or both.
CNN Money | Deficits: Better now, worse later
While lawmakers have made progress knocking back near-term deficits, they have done very little to rein in the country's long-term debt.
Bloomberg |
Health-Care Defunding Added to Republican Spending Bill

Republican leaders will include a provision in a temporary stopgap measure to keep the government operating that would permanently defund President Barack Obama’s health-care law.


Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Heritage Foundation | Debt Limit: Options and the Way Forward
Congress cuts spending only when forced to act, but it should carefully consider its options on the debt limit. The federal government hit the statutory debt limit on May 19, 2013, with $16.7 trillion in debt.
AEI | How Detroit went broke
Last February the Detroit News, after an exhaustive search of the city's tax rolls, found that 47 percent of Detroit property owners did not pay their property taxes in 2011. The amount of revenue lost to the city was $246 million.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
WSJ | How Did Advanced Economies Get in So Much Debt?
Overly optimistic budget projections, poor data on government liabilities and a flawed understanding about how shocks can hurt public finances, the International Monetary Fund says in a new policy paper published Tuesday.
Cato Institute | It’s Amazingly Simple to Balance the Budget
Based on Congressional Budget Office data, we can balance the budget in just three years if spending grows by “only” 1 percent per year.
Heritage Foundation | CBO Report’s Facts Speak Louder Than Obama’s Spending and Debt Crisis Denial
U.S. public debt doubled since before the recession and stands at a 50-year high today. The American public has not seen public debt levels this high since around World War II.