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Notable quotes in this 5 minute segment:
"They don’t want to look in the mirror. America doesn’t have a China problem. It really has a savings problem. America has the biggest shortfall of national savings of any leading country in modern history. And when you don’t have saving you have to run current account deficits to [...]

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In reading Scott Sumner’s take on the China currency peg dilemma, I see that both he and Paul Krugman hit on the fundamental problem in the debate: reserves. Everyone is talking about the peg as if relaxing the peg will be the magic bullet to America’s current account problem. But this is clearly not the [...]

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Popular myth and, allegedly, the laws of aerodynamics have it that the bumblebee should not be able to take flight. Yet still, our good bumblebee refuses to be pulled down by such details and year after year it takes flight as if nothing has happened. This allegory applies, with some imagination, to Japans economy too. [...]

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If I could relate the concept of malinvestment to business administration I would do it using the concept of depreciation. 
Depreciation is a term used in accounting and business to represent a writedown of a real asset on a company’s balance sheet to reflect its actual depreciation in value. If you build a building, it [...]

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I have sifted through the most recent personal income data and wanted to show you a few charts that might indicate where we’re heading.
First, there is personal income.  It’s fallen off a cliff since the recession began. Looking at the six-month average to smooth out blips, personal income growth peaked way back in June and [...]

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I am in the process of crunching the numbers from today’s report on U.S. personal income and outlays. The monthly data came out at 8:30 EST this morning but I think the quarterly data is more interesting because it goes back to 1947, where the monthly data only goes back to 1959. Here’s a chart [...]

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Marshall Auerback here with a post which I originally published at New Deal 2.0.
Last Friday, Mr. Obama and the GOP staged the equivalent of a British Parliamentary Question Period in front of the TV cameras. It showed the quick-thinking, articulate President at his best. Unfortunately, the subsequent Saturday morning national radio address showed him at [...]

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On a number of occasions, I have pointed to the sectoral balances model of finance to help demonstrate what happens when the government sector runs a deficit or a surplus. A recent article in the Financial Times by Martin Wolf on Japan’s woes highlights this subject and demonstrates how government deficits balance private sector saving. [...]

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Marshall Auerback here with a commentary on Robert Rubin’s recent Newsweek article on getting the economy back on track.
As we all know, during his tenure as Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin laid the groundwork for today’s crisis through his aggressive championing of financial deregulation.  Had he at least acknowledged some remorse or recognition of error, he [...]

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The New York Times points out that zero percent interest rates are not designed for savers. They are a tax on savers, especially the elderly living on a fixed income.
Millions of Americans are paying a high price for a safe place to put their money: extremely low interest rates on savings accounts and certificates of [...]