News and Analysis | Personal Finance | Finance 101 | From the Gov. | Comic Relief | Your Call

In these tough economic times, questions outnumber answers. Are you concerned about your job? Forced to cut back on spending? Worried about your retirement?

Get solid news, information, and advice from the most trusted media sources in America. And share your own concerns about the economic crisis.

Economic News and Analysis

Elizabeth Warren on the Economy
Stocks are up, but so is unemployment. What's wrong with this economic picture?

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?

Climate Change Is Victim Of 'Tragedy Of The Commons'
One reason it is so hard to slash carbon emissions is that climate change occurs globally. The countries that produce the most greenhouse gas all need to take action to fix the problem. That raises a classic economic dilemma called the tragedy of the commons.

Wholesale Market Highlights Real-Life Economics
Hunts Point in Bronx, N.Y., is the largest wholesale food market in the country. The action there happens late at night. The ebb and flow at the market, who's buying when, and at what price, are a real-life economics lesson compressed into a single night.

Financial Crisis Is 'Green' For The Environment
New studies are projecting that carbon dioxide emissions — greenhouse gas emissions — will decrease for the year 2009. That is thanks to the global recession. But the reprieve is small and expected to be short lived.

Dollar's Weakness Inspires Modern-day Gold Rush
Paul Solman looks at how the dollar's weakness has spurred a new gold rush.

Exactly Who Is the FDIC?
Paul Solman: The board members are listed on the FDIC's website, as is so much more about this government agency that you might want to put off reading it until you're on a long plane flight. The "corporation" answers to Congress, which created it in 1933 to prevent future bank panics.

Who Regulates the Student Loan Industry?
Paul Solman: As best I can tell, it's the Department of Education.

The Stimulus Giveth, and the Stimulus Taketh Away

by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica - November 25, 2009 12:15 pm EST

Today’s roundup of stimulus coverage:

First, in the name of the holiday, the giving.

Food banks and soup kitchens are more stocked than usual this year, thanks to an extra $100 million in resources from the stimulus, on top of the $250 million originally budgeted by the federal government, reports The New York Times. It’s a good thing, too—a recent survey by Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, found that requests for emergency food assistance were up by 30 percent from last year.

Read more…

Personal Finance

Buying Foreclosures
John Simons, Sr. Personal Finance Editor at Black Enterprise has some tips on buying foreclosures.

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.

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: Morgan_Bear
The "Fat Cats and the Cigar Smooking Baboons" have their money; actually they have the peoples' money that was freely doled out by the government, so far. And now they want more, and they will take more anyway they want too -- by treasonously high interet rates, raised for no due or just cause; higher fees, more fees; and higher credit card payments. And if you can still make the grade and the payments, they will jack-around your credit card payment due dates until you miss a timely payment, and then they will fk'ng screw with you all over again. So who are these total barbarians and titans: Bank of America, AMX, Chase, Citi, FirstCard, RBS, and all their smaller neighbors and local banks.
What should have happened is: AIG and the Wallstreet Investment Cats and Scammers and Scummers should have all been fed as fish food to the fish in the Oceans.....Those allowed to remain to clean-up, should be tied-in-place, restrained, disciplined, required to work 18 hours each day, and disallowed any executive pay above $100,000 and allowed NO Bonuses of any sort. Otherwise, they should all be placed on a crowded Barge, along with their favorite lobbyists, and some bread and water, and towed into the Central Atlantic Ocean, nearer the Western Cost of Africa and set adrift.

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.