Friday, September 30, 2011

There is no reason to be upset with BofA for its new debit-card fees.

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The ATM  Debit-card fee is transparent and easy to understand.  This is far preferable to the spate of fees (such as overdraft insurance cha...
4 comments:

Will the private market step in?

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Conforming loan limits in San Berardino and Riverside Counties in California will drop from $500,000 to $417,000 tomorrow; in LA and Orange ...
1 comment:

Austerity is a problem, but so is fear

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Paul Krugman this morning argues that fear of fear is phony .  He is almost certainly correct that fear is not the number one problem at th...
3 comments:

My friend (and co-author) Andy Reschovsky wins Steve Gold award

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It was nice to read about it this morning: University of Wisconsin–Madison economist  Andrew Reschovsky  will be honored in November wit...
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren on the need to facilitate refinances (h/t Kurt Paulsen)

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He says  at a meeting in Stockholm: There are several proposals that attempt to facilitate refinancing for homeowners who have been negat...
1 comment:
Monday, September 26, 2011

Hard Choices

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Los Angeles (and other large cities) have food deserts--places with limited access to fresh, healthful, relatively inexpensive food.  Low-in...
1 comment:

Michio Kaku on CERN's Challenge to Relativity

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In this morning's WSJ : Reputations may rise and fall. But in the end, this is a victory for science. No theory is carved in stone. Sc...
Thursday, September 22, 2011

A reminder: Ronald Reagan raised capital gains taxes

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The Tax Reform Act of 1986 actually did two things that required the affluent to pay higher taxes: it raised the effective tax rate on long-...
2 comments:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Read Taylor Branch's Atlantic Piece on the NCAA

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Let me pull out two paragraphs  from the powerful story: Educators are in thrall to their athletic departments because of these televisio...
1 comment:
Saturday, September 17, 2011

Allowing underwater borrowers to refinance could improve investors' Sharpe Ratio

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Consider borrowers with 6 percent 30-year mortgages that are 20 percent underwater.  Assume that the probability that any one borrower will ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Testimony to Senate Banking Committee on the Need for Mortgage Guarantees

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I testified yesterday.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011

If the Walt Disney Company ran LA Metro...

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People would pay $80 a day to leave their cars in a garage, and then walk from one mode of rail transit to another.  And the rail trips woul...
Friday, September 09, 2011

Jim Follain has a proposal for empirical macro

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He writes: First, let’s do more research to help reduce the uncertainty regarding the fiscal situation we face and the new, modern and mor...
3 comments:
Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Ten-Year Treasury Below 2 percent!

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If I am reading this graph correctly , we are at a 130 year record: Those bond vigilantes sure are being vengeful.  And how about that S...
1 comment:
Monday, September 05, 2011

Where are the Medicis when you need them?

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Richard White's Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America , is a wonderful book.  In it he shows how the railro...

Realtors should love school spending

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In the most recent Wisconsin gubernatorial election, Realtors and homebuilders were the leading campaign contributors to Scott Walker. As g...
6 comments:
Friday, September 02, 2011

A point I wish I had made to NPR

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I just finished taping an interview with Robert Siegel on finding our way out of the housing crisis.  I agreed with Elizabeth Duke about the...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Allowing underwater borrowers to refinance could help

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Yves Smith and Adam Levitin , for whom I have enormous respect, argue that allowing underwater borrowers to refinance their mortgages at l...
4 comments:
Monday, August 29, 2011

Top 10 Least-Polluting U.S. Metros

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From the Urban Land Institute: Top 10 Least-Polluting U.S. Metros : As greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies gain momentum at the fe...
Thursday, August 25, 2011

What does Warren Buffett know?

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When I first read this morning that Warren Buffett had invested $5 billion in Bank of America, I was puzzled.  I didn't know how Buffett...
2 comments: