General Economics

News                                                                                                                             
Politico | The $38 billion nuclear waste fiasco
Doing nothing often has a cost — and when it comes to storing the nation’s nuclear waste, the price is $38 billion and rising.
Bloomberg | Euro-Area Manufacturing Expands More Than Estimated
Euro-area manufacturing output grew more than initially estimated in November, led by Germany, the currency bloc’s largest economy.
National Journal | Congress Is Running Out of Time
The House returns to session on Monday with just seven more days on the legislative schedule this year and time running out on a budget deal, a farm-bill reauthorization, and a long list of other items requiring action by year's end.
Market Watch | U.S. construction spending up in October
Outlays for U.S. construction projects rose in October after falling in September, the Commerce Department reported Monday.
FOX Business | Manufacturing Activity Highest Since April 2011
The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years last month, an industry report showed on Monday, while the pace of hiring in the sector also accelerated.
CNN Money | Food stamp cuts hit hard this Thanksgiving
"The food stamp cuts that came down November 1 took 76 million meals out of the New York City economy alone," she said.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Real Clear Markets | The Democratic Party Is Now The Party Of Big Business
The traditional view of American political parties and their special interest groups is that the Republican Party represents big business and social conservatives while the Democratic Party represents labor unions and the poor.
Real Clear Markets | We Have a Failure of Economic Vocabulary
Among our problems is a failure of economic language. We lack the words and concepts to describe observable reality. By conventional wisdom, the Great Recession is long over.
Forbes | The Great Depression Was Ended by the End of World War II, Not the Start of It
A common fallacy is that the Great Depression was ended by the explosive spending of World War II.  But World War II actually institutionalized the sharp decline in the standard of living caused by the Depression.  The Depression was actually ended, and prosperity restored, by the sharp reductions in spending, taxes and regulation at the end of World War II, exactly contrary to the analysis of Keynesian so-called economists.
Washington Times | Spending on social welfare rose as economy tanked during recession
Spending on social welfare programs soared by $500 billion to $2.1 trillion during the Great Recession, but the increase was almost entirely due to the historic surge in unemployment to 10 percent rather than a liberalization of benefits by the government, according to two studies out this month.
Mercatus | Government Report on Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations Fails to Capture Full Impact of Rules
Each year, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) produces a report on the benefits and costs of federal regulations, using Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) created by federal agencies. The OIRA report and the underlying agency RIAs together provide an estimate of the effects regulations are likely to have on the economy upon implementation.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
WSJ | World-Wide Factory Activity, by Country
Much of the world’s factory sector was expanding in November, as manufacturers in the U.S. posted their strongest month since April 2011 and much of the euro zone rebounded.
Library of Economics | Robert Murphy on Why Government Can't Run Like a Business
We often hear people, including businessmen, lament the fact that the government doesn't seem to be run like a business. Many of them want it to.

Health Care

News                                                                                                                             
CNN Money | Why some states pay less for Obamacare
How much you'll pay for Obamacare could partly depend on how much your state fought for you.
Politico | Supreme Court rejects Liberty University employer mandate challenge to health law
The high court rejected a petition from Liberty University, which challenged the law’s employer coverage requirements, individual mandate and contraception coverage requirements. A lower court upheld the law in Liberty’s case.
National Journal | Obamacare Federal Exchange Enrollment Said to Reach 100,000 in November
The number is just for those states participating in the federal exchange. Although it still far behind the administration's original goal before problems with the federal enrollment website, it marks an almost four-fold increase from the first month.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
WSJ | ObamaCare Mission Accomplished
Great news: The White House says that Healthcare.gov and the 36 federally run insurance exchanges are finally good to go. The only thing missing from Sunday's relentlessly upbeat progress report was President Obama in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Monetary

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Washington Times | A holiday wish for the Fed
Retail shops have been doing whatever it takes, including working on Thanksgiving, to entice a few more customers into stores and online outlets. Even after the final “cyber Monday” sales are tallied, the Christmas-buying season may not have gotten off to a big enough start to revive an economy that’s been dragging for the past five years.
AEI | Reducing the impact of too big to fail
In the years leading up to the financial crisis, market participants assumed that policy makers would intervene to avoid the potential negative economic impact from the failure of a systemically important bank.

Taxes

News                                                                                                                             
FOX Business | U.S. Supreme Court Won't Hear Online Sales Tax Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it won’t hear Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) legal challenge to a state law that requires online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases even where the retailers have no physical presence.
FOX Business | 10 Tax Law Changes You Need to Know About
Our country’s tax code is long and complex and is regularly getting changed by lawmakers, making it hard to keep up with all the updates.

Employment

News                                                                                                                             
Bloomberg | Cognizant to Hire 10,000 U.S. Workers
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (CTSH), one of the largest providers of outsourcing services, plans to hire about 10,000 U.S. workers, potentially soothing concerns that the industry is harming the domestic job market.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Mercatus | Government-Financed Employment and the Real Private Sector in the 50 States
In 2012, public-sector employment made up more than 16 percent of the US labor market. Direct government employment fails to capture the full impact of government spending on state labor markets. Using federal contract data obtained from USAspending.gov, we estimated the percentage of private sector jobs actually financed by federal contract dollars in each state. The following four maps visualize our findings.

Blogs                                                                                                                             
Café Hayek | Not to Mention that the Origin of the U.S. Minimum Wage Had Nothing to Do with ‘Fairness’
Forget that this argument undermines a pet assertion of minimum-wage proponents, namely, that employers have monopsony power over low-skilled workers.  (Monopsonist employers do not routinely lose workers to other employers.) 

Budget

News                                                                                                                             
National Journal | Countdown to Another Fiscal Fail
Lawmakers in both parties could face a dangerous political dilemma after they return to Washington: Either endorse a second round of damaging sequester cuts or prepare for another government shutdown.
CNN Money | Detroit bankruptcy ruling expected Tuesday
Unions and pension funds have argued that Detroit should be denied the protection of the court. They say that regardless of the city's financial troubles, officials did not negotiate with creditors in good faith to reach a deal on Detroit's debts. That is one of the conditions for a city to proceed in bankruptcy court.
CNBC | Playing with fire? Margin debt most since crisis
As investors feel emboldened by the seemingly unstoppable stock market rally, they're borrowing money at record levels to keep things going.

Econ Comments & Analysis                                                                                            
Politico | Shutdown prevention: Back-room talks start
A bipartisan group of senators may serve as a last-minute lifeline if the government faces another shutdown at the start of next year.