End the Fed as we know it

Jane D'Arista is a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she also co-founded an Economists’ Committee for Financial Reform called SAFER, i.e. stable, accountable, efficient & fair reform

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11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy

The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice.

Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day.

11 of those foundational problems are discussed below. They are undeniable and they are constantly getting worse. If they are not corrected (and there is no indication that they will be) they will destroy not only our economy but also our entire way of life. The sad truth is that it would be hard to understate just how desperate the situation is for the U.S. economy.

Long-Term Trend #1: The Deindustrialization Of America
Long-Term Trend #2: The Exploding U.S. Trade Deficit
Long-Term Trend #3: The Shrinking Middle Class
Long-Term Trend #4: The Growing Size Of The U.S. Government
Long-Term Trend #5: The Constantly Growing U.S. National Debt
Long-Term Trend #6: The Ongoing Devaluation Of The U.S. Dollar
Long-Term Trend #7: The Derivatives Bubble
Long-Term Trend #8: The Health Care Industry
Long-Term Trend #9: Financial Power Is Becoming Concentrated In Fewer And Fewer Hands
Long-Term Trend #10: Rampant Corruption On Wall Street
Long-Term Trend #11: The Growing Retirement Crisis That Threatens To Bankrupt America

Read Michael Snyder's in-depth analysis at businessinsider.com
photo by karpidis


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Tax Cuts clearly explained - The White House Whiteboard

Greg Mankiw on the Democrat-Republican compromise over taxes

I am generally pleased with the compromise over taxes the President and Republicans struck yesterday. (The President should be too, but he seemed dejected at his news conference. Buck up, Mr President! You don't want anyone to start thinking of the word "malaise.")

One aspect of the deal struck me as worth discussing with econ students: The compromise includes a one-year cut in the payroll tax by 2 percentage points. The tax cut will be entirely in the employees' share. Why do you think they designed the policy in this way? Was it the right choice?


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Alternatives to Austerity

by Joseph Stiglitz

NEW YORK – In the aftermath of the Great Recession, countries have been left with unprecedented peacetime deficits and increasing anxieties about their growing national debts. In many countries, this is leading to a new round of austerity – policies that will almost surely lead to weaker national and global economies and a marked slowdown in the pace of recovery. Those hoping for large deficit reductions will be sorely disappointed, as the economic slowdown will push down tax revenues and increase demands for unemployment insurance and other social benefits.
The attempt to restrain the growth of debt does serve to concentrate the mind – it forces countries to focus on priorities and assess values. The United States is unlikely in the short term to embrace massive budget cuts, à la the United Kingdom. But the long-term prognosis – made especially dire by health-care reform’s inability to make much of a dent in rising medical costs – is sufficiently bleak that there is increasing bipartisan momentum to do something. President Barack Obama has appointed a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, whose chairmen recently provided a glimpse of what their report might look like.

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Photo source: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/the-great-recession-of-2011-2012/

African Poverty Is Falling…Much Faster Than You Think

by Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

Sub-Saharan Africa has made little progress in reducing extreme poverty, according to the latest Millennium Development Report. This column presents evidence from 1970 to 2006 to the contrary.

The picture of Africa as a place of collapse, hunger, disease and death is slowly fading. Both official statistics and the popular press acknowledge a nascent “African Renaissance”, as the continent is enjoying its longest and strongest growth spurt since independence.
Nevertheless, it is still widely believed that this growth is primarily driven by oil and natural resource prices, and that it is confined to well-connected elites in geographically advantaged countries. The popular image is that the poor majority in all African nations and many African nations as a whole are stuck in “poverty traps” created by unfortunate geography and calamitous history. For example, the prospects of meeting first Millennium Development Goal of “halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people earning an income less than $1 a day” seem to appear bleak for Africa; the UN writes in its latest Millennium Development Report that “little progress was made in reducing extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa” (UNDP 2008).

We disagree. The sustained African growth of the last 15 years has engendered a steady decline in poverty that puts Africa on track to meet the Goals by 2017. If peace is established in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it returns to the African trend (which is what happened to other African nations that were formerly at war), Africa will halve its $1/day income poverty rate by 2013, two years ahead of the 2015 target.

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Photo source: http://africanstudies.georgetown.edu/67976.html

USA: Why Obama might compromise on Bush tax cuts for the rich

President Obama and Congressional Republicans are close to a big economic compromise: Obama would agree to extend Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, while GOP leaders would relent and allow passage of extended benefits for the long-term unemployed.
"They are making progress," said White House spokesman Bill Burton on negotiations surrounding the deal on Monday on negotiations surrounding the deal.
Such a deal would mark a profound turnabout for Obama, who campaigned hard on the idea that extending tax cuts for the wealthy would be wrong. What caused him to change his mind?
After all, Democrats still control both chambers of Congress. Republicans made big gains in midterm elections, but most of the GOP reinforcements won’t be seated until next session, after the Bush tax cuts are set to expire.
Many liberal Democrats want to take a stand on this issue. If Republicans persist in blocking efforts to extend the cuts only for those making less than $250,000 a year, let them, goes the liberals’ argument. Sure, everyone’s taxes would then rise – but it would be on the GOP’s head.

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Photo source: http://www.slate.com/id/2276309?wpisrc=xs_0001