News
Bloomberg | Bonds Captivate $16 Trillion of Pensions
Bond buyers stung by the first losses in more than a decade can look to pension funds from companies such as Ford Motor Co. (F) for a measure of redemption.
WSJ | Why Business Investment Could Break Out
Many say they want to see the economy growing faster—generating sustained growth in demand for their goods and services—before they would be willing to splurge on new equipment, software and buildings. But lackluster business spending is one thing holding back growth.
Econ Comments & Analysis
WSJ | How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married
If President Obama wants to reduce income inequality, he should focus less on redistributing income and more on fighting a major cause of modern poverty: the breakdown of the family. A man mostly raised by a single mother and his grandparents who defied the odds to become president of the United States is just the person to take up the cause.
Real Clear Markets | The War On Poverty's Wins and Losses
We are awash in retrospectives of the War on Poverty, launched 50 years ago this month by Lyndon Johnson. A furious debate has developed between those (mostly liberals) who consider the war an important, if incomplete, triumph and those (mostly conservatives) who judge it a wasteful defeat. In reality, we both won and lost the War on Poverty. This is an ambiguous truth that our acrimonious political culture has trouble accepting.
WSJ | Leading From the Front on Free Trade
America's commitment to free trade will be tested in 2014. After years of indifference to trade policy, the Obama administration now has an agenda. Congress must decide whether the U.S. will lead in opening markets and creating fair rules for free enterprise in a new international economy. Where will Republicans stand?
AEI | Owning the income inequality issue
Democrats are obsessed with income inequality. They are determined to exploit the issue in this midterm-election year. It is a strategy that will no doubt be aided and abetted by the media. Pope Francis was named Time magazine’s “Person for the Year” for his critique of what he called “trickle down” capitalism.
Blogs
WSJ | 5 Things to Watch on the Economic Calendar
After Friday’s incredibly disappointing employment report that showed only 74,000 jobs added in December, economy-watchers, investors and more than a few Federal Reserve officials will want to know: was the jobs report a sign of continued economic wobbliness or an outlier? The upcoming week’s spate of reports will include retail sales, housing and industrial production. The Fed’s Beige Book will also impart some insight. Here are five data points that will offer clues:
CATO | Uncertainty and Economic Fluctuations
The crucial unanswered question is why uncertainty increased in 2008.
WSJ | Number of the Week: How 2013 Stacked Up, in Charts
2013: A year of records, a bit of return to normalcy, but some continued struggles.
Library of Economics | Do barriers create "bubbles?"
The basic set-up of his narrative remained unchanged from last year. Imagine a world, he said, in which resources are increasingly concentrated in the hands of those with high propensities to save and low propensities to invest: reserve accumulating foreign governments, for example, and the very rich.
Café Hayek | Two Notes on Income Inequality
Here’s part of John Goodman’s sensible defense of income inequality; specifically here, Goodman challenges those people who argue that income inequality itself is a concern that potentially should be (attempted to be) reduced through government policies even if the inequality means that the absolute level of incomes of the lowest-income people are higher than they would be with less income inequality
