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Economic News and Analysis

Keep on Trucking?
Would you pay more in taxes to fix roads and rail?

Gambling With Health Care
Is the economic collapse creating a health care calamity?

Wall Street Reform and You
How Obama's proposal to reform Wall Street might affect your finances.

U.S. Economic Steps May Be Leading To Bubble
The global economy is slowly recovering after the worst financial crisis in decades, but government efforts to stimulate growth, including the Fed's move to drive interest rates down to zero, may be creating another problem. Prices for assets — gold, stocks and real estate in Asia — are soaring, leading to warnings that a new bubble could be forming.

Why Do Countries Rich In Oil Still Have Poverty?
This week's Planet Money report deals with what economists call the "paradox of oil." We'll meet two men who work in the African nation of Angola. One is an American, who makes big money in the oil business. The other is an Angolan who sells chewing gum on the street.

GM Faces Long Odds In Paying Back Its Bailout
The U.S. government has poured $50 billion into General Motors, and taxpayers own 61 percent of the automaker's stock. Now the question is whether sales can ever recover enough for the public to get its money back.

States Continue to Struggle with Budget Woes
Although the national economy is seeing glimmers of recovery, many states continue to struggle.

Fed's Powers Tested Under Senate Plan
Senate Democrats have unveiled a sweeping proposal for a new approach to financial regulation, which at its core calls into question the Federal Reserve's power to oversee banks.

Ask the FDIC's Sheila Bair Your Questions
Paul Solman: We're interviewing Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, this Friday. And she's agreed to answer your questions as well as mine.

Game On, Education Departments

by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica - November 12, 2009 12:27 pm EST

Today’s roundup of stimulus coverage:

There’s $4.35 billion in Race to the Top education grants, but the spoils may go to only a few winners.   In what The Wall Street Journal calls “one of the most significant competitions” of the stimulus package, the number of states that will get a share of the money may be less than 15.  Using an elaborate scoring system just announced, the program will benefit only those states that have already taken steps to shake up their school systems, the Journal reports. “This is going to be highly competitive, and there are going to be a lot more losers than winners,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporter Neil King Jr. Preliminary plans for the program provoked an outpouring of criticism.

Read more…

Personal Finance

Getting a Recession Raise
Donna Rosato, Senior Writer at Money Magazine, has tips that could help you negotiate a raise during this recession.

Taxing Investments
Jason Zweig, personal finance editor at the Wall Street Journal talks about paying too many taxes on your investments.

The Broken Rule of Finances
Harriet Johnson Brackey of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has some insight when everything you thought you knew about money goes haywire.

You've Retired, Now What? - An NBR Special
NBR wraps up its Get Your Finances Ready for Retirement series with this Good Friday special. The focus is on maintaining your finances after you retire.

Retiring Sooner Than Planned
If you've been forced to retire early, prepare to spend more years in retirement with fewer dollars.

Avoiding Scams in Retirement
Be diligent in retirement to avoid becoming a victim of scams.

Finance 101

From the Gov.

Comic Relief

Your Call

Commenter: Moreno
Scientist Monkeys Around With The Economy

"Dr. Noe wonders how much of human economics operates along similar lines. As he puts it, even on the stock market, people might play more with their bellies than with their brains."

A monkey who can open a container has a skill. It's just like a human with job skills.

There's nothing illogical about it. What this relates to is competition. If you have 10 people competing for a job, or who can do a job, that job will pay a lot more than if there are 100 or even 1000 people competing for that job.

This to applies immigration and it applies to outsourcing.

What people might want to look at is how the economy of Mexico was damaged, causing the highest out migration rate in the world, which puts pressure on people in the US who do manual labor. You might be surprised Goldman Sachs and Citigroup come up http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/TheRighttoStayHome.html

It's just like people in India getting into the computer science job market in the US. These jobs are now worth less because you have so much competition in the market. The difference is this is a computer science skill rather than a manual labor skill.

Of course this is the correlation from this study you weren't supposed to get.