Economy
North Kingstown’s Mark Zaccaria, active small businessman and Republican Party Second District Congressional Candidate in 2008, has taken up the challenge of expounding upon Bruce Bartlett’s basic view of why deficit spending is needed now. Mr. Bartlett has said that…I do not believe that budget deficits are inherently stimulative. However, when we are in a…
Today’s New York Times (h/t Kathryn Jean Lopez) reports that the multi-billion dollar bets that the government has made on several too-big-to-fail institutions don’t look like they are going to pay off — but that the big institutions have a plan that they think can turn things around: just have the government put even more…
Columbia University Business School Professors Christopher Mayer and Glenn Hubbard believe that the best way to arrest the slump in the housing and mortgage industry at the heart of the present financial crisis is to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (already nationalized by the government) offer low-interest loans that would be accessible by anyone…
Christopher Mayer, Vice-Dean and Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, has offered the public a detailed critique of President Barack Obama’s mortgage and housing Plan. Professor Mayer explains that the crisis is, in large measure, the result of an incentive structure in the mortgage industry that currently makes modifying the loan agreements for…
Both Justin and I have recently posted about the RI employment market, with a particular focus on manufacturing jobs. In the February 23 edition of National Review, Jim Manzi has an interesting piece on the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. Except, as Manzi explains, it hasn’t. Manufacturing jobs have declined, but output is the…
Would anyone with an understanding of markets and finance — I know we have a few people qualified on this subject in our reading audience — like to take a stab at filling in the details about the relationship between deficits, monetary policy and interest rates that former White House (under Reagan) and Treasury Department…
I’m not saying that we’re imagining outsourcing, automation, and other economic factors, but it’s nice to read such things as this from time to time: It may seem like the country that used to make everything is on the brink of making nothing. In January, 207,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished in the largest one-month drop…
I have a question. Once the dust settles on the big grandchildren’s money drop heading the states’ way, how is our failed public finance system going to maintain all of this on top of the infrastructure and assets that it currently struggles to keep in one piece? To Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, new federal…
What takes up 10% of my weekly paycheck? Family health care, that’s what. And that’s just my share. My employer kicks in some, too. Like so many other employees of small businesses, my company had to health-plan shop again this year to find a way of keeping costs down. In our case, the health care…
Hey, looks like the average Joes and Jills are going to get a whole $13 extra a week thanks to the “stimulus” bill. So, what are YOU gonna do with all that extra coin?
