Here’s what the Treasury Secretary has to say for himself this morning:
The actions taken by Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC in October have clearly helped stabilize our financial system. Before we acted, we were at a tipping point. Credit markets were largely frozen, denying financial institutions, businesses and consumers
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What kind of fiscal stimulus would have the most impact on the economy? Moody’s Economy.com has made estimates for various different stimulus proposals of the one-year change in GDP for each dollar in government spending or tax cuts. Here are some examples:
Non-refundable lump-sum tax rebate: $1.01
Refundable lump-sum tax rebate:
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This question is taking on some urgency for me and the thousands of other American workers facing layoffs. Because the only thing that scares me more than not having an income is not having health insurance.
“Not to worry,” said my husband, cheerfully. “Obama will get us universal healthcare.”
There’s talk that healthcare is bumping …
The Chinese government’s big announcement that it would spend $586 billion stimulating its domestic economy by building highways, railroads and airports excited global markets for about half a day Monday. Then everybody remembered that, as the WSJ reports:
Already, according to official estimates, infrastructure spending had been
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WaPo has a great article about Japanese convenience stores, where
you can buy fresh sushi and carbon offsets, pay income tax and change diapers, book airplane tickets and sip vodka coolers. There’s hot soup, cold beer, fresh bread, clean toilets, french fries, earwax remover, spotless floors, and a broadband-empowered machine that will
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As I’ve pointed out, one of the big issues with re-writing the terms of mortgages to make them more affordable is that homeowners often have to start missing payments before lenders will make the time to talk. Not exactly the best way to get ahead of the housing crisis.
Well, now Citigroup is stepping up with a push to get to …
It’s already been noted that Warren Buffett seemed to get a much better deal on his Goldman Sachs capital injection than the Treasury Department did. It turns out the United Steelworkers union has been kind enough to actually run the numbers on the two deals, using the Black-Scholes option pricing model to value them (steel workers are …
Here’s a little something I wrote last January on the way home from the World Economic Forum in Davos:
After hearing various gloomy pronouncements from members of TIME’s Board of Economists, audience member C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics grabbed a mike, stood up and declared that growth in emerging
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Synovate, a firm that tracks credit-card mail volume, today released its third-quarter figures. Not surprisingly, folks are getting a lot fewer offers in their mailboxes these days: 940 million pitches went out in the first nine months of 2008, down 27% from the same period in 2007.
But, in a fascinating little twist, both credit lines …
They announced layoffs in my division this morning. I’m still on maternity leave and therefore out of the corridors, but here’s what I know is going on: staffers are clustering in offices and cubicles, arms crossed and heads down, sharing rumors and hearsay, making predictions about who’ll stay and who’ll go. Layoff announcements don’t …
Sorry for being way behind on the big news of the day. Stuff’s been happening here in the Time & Life Building.
Anyway, the government has decided to renegotiate and ease the terms of its deal with AIG. Reports the WSJ:
Under the terms ironed out late Sunday, the government would give AIG more money, including $40 billion from the U.S.
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I’ve been among those arguing that GM ought to shut up about a government bailout and use the well-established bailout/reinvention tool that is Chapter 11 bankruptcy to pave the way for a better future. Now here, courtesy of the WSJ’s John Stoll, are GM’s three arguments for why that’s not an option–followed by my analysis in …
