Education: College Graduates' Non-Recession

For more, see College Graduates' Non-Recession by Dylan Matthews, August 16, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Economics: Yes, We Have No Inflation

For more, see Yes, We Have No Inflation by Dylan Matthews, August 15, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Technology: Skilled Work, Without the Worker

A good article about the advance of robotics in manufacturing is Skilled Work, Without the Worker by John Markoff, August 18, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Taxes: Indigestion for 'Les Riches' In a Plan for Higher Taxe

For more, see Indigestion for 'Les Riches' In a Plan for Higher Taxe, August 7, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Economics: Leverage, Debt, and Entitlement

We must overcome the many years during which policymakers lost sight of sustainable drivers of growth and jobs and instead ended up relying on excessive leverage, over-indebtedness and an absurd sense of credit entitlement.)

For more, see Paul Ryan's Plan and the Next 'New Normal' by Mohamed a. EL-Erian, August 13, 2012 at The Washington Post.

Economics: Fannie Mae Posts $2.2B Net Gain for Q2

Fannie Mae earned $2.2 billion from April through June, its second quarterly gain in net income since being taken over by the government during the 2008 financial crisis.

Fannie and smaller sibling Freddie Mac were taken over by the government after massive losses on risky mortgages threatened to topple them.

Fannie has received about $116 billion so far from the Treasury Department, the most expensive bailout of a single company. So far Fannie has repaid about $26 billion of that bailout.

Taxpayers have spent about $170 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie. It could cost roughly $260 billion more to support the companies through 2014 after subtracting dividend payments, according to the government.

Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans, which are worth more than $5 trillion. Along with several federal agencies, they backed nearly 90% of new mortgages over the past year.

Fannie and Freddie buy home loans from banks and other lenders, package them into bonds with a guarantee against default, and then sell them to investors around the world.

For more, see Fannie Mae Posts $2.2B Net Gain for Q2 by The Associated Press, August 8, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Economics: Wages Aren't Stagnating, They're Plummeting

Median wages of all US workers:

When you take all men, not just those working fulltime, into account, the slight decline in the above graph becomes a plummet of 28% in median real wages from 1969 to 2009.

For more, see Wages Aren't Stagnating, They're Plummeting by Dylan Matthews, July 31, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Economics: The Amazing Global Optimism Gap: 1 More Way China Is Totally Weird

In the United States, 68% respondents reported a good personal economic situation versus but 31% reported a good national economic situation. Our 37% gap isn't even the biggest in the English speaking world: Only 15% of British people are optimistic about their economy, four times worse than the 64% that consider their personal finances strong.

Here is the world's optimism gap. Only in China and Egypt are people more optimistic about the country than their personal situation.

For more, see The Amazing Global Optimism Gap: 1 More Way China Is Totally Weird by Derek Thompson, July 12, 2012 at The Atlantic.

Taxes: Some of the Largest Tax Increases

For more, see No, 'Obamacare' Isn't 'The Largest Tax Increase in the History of the World' (in One Chart) by Ezra Klein, July 2, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Healthcare: Will Medicaid Expansion Costs Break States' Backs?

What would happen to state budgets if all states went ahead with the Medicaid expansion? The Congressional Budget Office says that it would increase state spending on the program by $73 billion by 2022—-the equivalent of a "2.8% increase in what states would have spent on Medicaid from 2014 to 2022 in the absence of health reform," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained.

For more, see GOP Governors Say Medicaid Costs Are Already Breaking States' Backs. Are They Right? by Suzy Khimm, July 3, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Taxes: States Face Tough Choices Even as Downturn Ends

... the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Washington associated with Citizens for Tax Justice, which advocates a more progressive tax code, issued a report this year that found that the states with high income tax rates had outperformed those with no income tax over the past decade when it came to economic growth per capita and median family income.

For more, see States Face Tough Choices Even as Downturn Ends by Michael Cooper, July 10, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Mind: Intrade's Weaknesses

About Intrade which is a website which allows members to trade futures (bet) on the outcomes of events ...

But the [Intrade] crowd was not everywhere wise. For one thing, many of the betting pools on Intrade and Betfair attract relatively few traders, in part because using them legally is cumbersome. (No, I do not know from experience.) The thinness of these markets can cause them to adjust too slowly to new information.

And there is this: If the circle of people who possess information is small enough —- as with the selection of a vice president or pope or, arguably, a decision by the Supreme Court —- the crowds may not have much wisdom to impart. "There is a class of markets that I think are basically pointless," says Justin Wolfers, .... "There is no widely available public information."

For more, see When the Crowd Isn't Wise by David Leonhardt, July 7, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Economics: The Great Abdication

Suddenly normally calm economists are talking about 1931, the year everything fell apart.

It started with a banking crisis in a small European country (Austria). Austria tried to step in with a bank rescue —- but the spiraling cost of the rescue put the government's own solvency in doubt. Austria's troubles shouldn't have been big enough to have large effects on the world economy, but in practice they created a panic that spread around the world. Sound familiar?

The really crucial lesson of 1931, however, was about the dangers of policy abdication. Stronger European governments could have helped Austria manage its problems. Central banks, notably the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve, could have done much more to limit the damage. But nobody with the power to contain the crisis stepped up to the plate; everyone who could and should have acted declared that it was someone else's responsibility.

And it's happening again, both in Europe and in America.

For more, see The Great Abdication by Paul Krugman, June 24, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Europe: In Former East Germany, Anxious Residents Resent Paying for Europe's Problems

Germany may be Europe's most powerful economy. But its prosperity is so uneven that Poles just across the border see it differently: as a place where housing is a bargain.

With unemployment higher in Loecknitz than anywhere else in Germany, a big house on a generous parcel of land runs just $90,000, real estate agents say. That is the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in nearby Szczecin, a burgeoning Polish city of 400,000 a half-hour away.

In the past, "it was always a one-way road," with Germans moving to Poland because of the difference in prices, said Krzysztof Wojciechowski, a professor at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder, a city that abuts Poland. Now, he said, the situation is reversed.

Anxiety in Germany's poorer areas is part of the reason the country has been reluctant to contribute more toward European rescue programs. Many Germans in this region say the notion that they should give over more money to pay away Europe's problems misjudges their own situation. And although the more urgent problems facing countries such as Greece and Spain have prompted other European leaders to call for greater German assistance, opinion polls show that most Germans approve of Merkel's unwillingness to dip deeper into her country's treasury.

Even now, many Germans see reunification as no more than a mixed success —- a tremendously expensive undertaking that brought prosperity to a few cities but left the countryside and smaller towns such as Loecknitz depopulated and economically depressed.

For more, see In Former East Germany, Anxious Residents Resent Paying for Europe's Problems by Michael Birnbaum, June 21, 2012 at The Washington Post.

Poll: Putting China's Economic Power in Perspective

... as you can see, it's primarily the developed world that views China as the greater juggernaut. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic are among the countries whose populations are more likely to say China's economic power has eclipsed America's.

Now look at the developing world. In most of these countries —- Turkey, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, Brazil and Mexico —- respondents were significantly more likely to rate the United States as more economically powerful than China.

The gross domestic product per capita in China was $8,400 in 2011; in the United States, it was nearly six times that, at $48,100.

For more, see Putting China's Economic Power in Perspective by Catherine Rampell, June 15, 2012 at Economix.

Well-Being: Stress During Recession Hits One Group Particularly Hard

Using surveys from 1983, 2006 and 2009, the research from Carnegie Mellon University's Sheldon Cohen and Denise Janicki-Deverts found a 10 to 30% increase in stress levels among all demographic categories over the past quarter-century.

For more, see Stress During Recession Hits One Group Particularly Hard by Chad Brooks, June 14, 2012 at LiveScience.

Investing: More Fraud at Companies of Ostentatiously Wealthy CEOs

CEOs with a taste for luxury goods—- expensive cars, boats, and houses—-aren't more likely to commit fraud, researchers found. But fraud is more likely to happen in the companies that they run, ....

Big-spender CEOs also tend to run companies that take bigger risks, but have poorer performance and are more likely to go bankrupt.

For more, see Study: Companies Run by Ostentatiously Wealthy CEOs More Likely to Perpetrate Fraud by Suzy Khimm, June 10, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Taxes: The Five Largest Individual Tax Expenditures, 2014

For more, see Baucus's Not-So-Simple Plan to Simplify the Tax Code by Suzy Khimm, June 11, 2012 at Wonkblog.

Economics: Who Killed American Unions?

And ...

For more, see Who Killed American Unions? by Derek Thompson, June 7, 2012 at The Atlantic.

Well-Being: Life Satisfaction And Income

For more, see The 10 Things Economics Can Tell Us About Happiness by Derek Thompson, May 31, 2012 at The Atlantic.