Share
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 [...]

Share
Holiday people, as we head into the new year, I’d like to get the pulse of Credit Writedowns readers on the state of the economy.  Last night, I started a poll asking how long the recovery will last.

I am not sure whether the poll questions are readable in the feed or newsletter, but the answers [...]

Share
Arnold Kling makes an important contribution to the debate about fiscal stimulus and double dip recessions which was also pointed out to me in the comments of my recent double dip post:
Paul Krugman provides an analysis showing arithmetically that the fiscal stimulus will have a declining contribution to GDP growth, even as stimulus spending increases.
What [...]

Share
Remember when I said the following:
GDP as reported
From my view point point, the interesting bit about GDP is NOT inflation (i.e. real vs. nominal GDP), but rather the fact that the number which is reported is a first derivative.  It is the change in GDP which is reported, not the actual number.  And, this is [...]

Share
This comes from the blog News from 1930 on financial news from this day in… 1930 (I don’t what they plan to do after New Year’s Day):
Bankers Trust of Philadelphia closed after heavy withdrawals; had 135,000 depositors, total deposits $42.5M; Penn. Sec. of Banking says financial situation in Philadelphia sound, no reason for depositors in [...]

Share
As we approach the new year, I have decided to write a few thematic posts as a look back at some of the more important economic topics that this credit crisis has uncovered. The thinking is that tying posts together in a theme might give a better holistic view of a few themes than the [...]

Share
For the period leading up to the panic last year, I had been warning of a rather severe recession. My view at the time was that what was needed was a realignment of America’s industrial organization away from finance and housing where serious overinvestment meant many firms would fail and asset prices would fall.This turned [...]

Share
The latest WSJ/NBC News poll shows that President Obama’s approval rating has now slipped under 50%. This makes his the steepest first year decline in modern history.
Why?  You know what I would say:

Obama doesn’t know when to be an asshole
Obama wasted political capital on bank bailouts

See what Aaron Task and Henry Blodget have [...]

Share
I am not sure I buy Meredith Whitney’s assertion that the government is “out of bullets” in its quest to prop up the economy. It’s a matter of political will more than anything else. Nevertheless, I do agree with her basic premise in the CNBC video below that the financial sector is likely to see [...]

Share
This is an important question which Brad DeLong asks (Hat tip Mark Thoma). Here’s the logic:
Right now, if you ask the decisive members of congress—by which I mean the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, or the most conservative Democrats and most liberal Republicans in the Senate —why the president and the Congress are not [...]