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Has the 'Peak Oil' Tipping Point Arrived?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 29, 2012 Comment (13)Robert Hahn is director of economics at Oxford's Smith School, chief economist at the Legatum Institute, and a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Peter Passell is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica and the editor of its quarterly economic policy journal, The Milken Institute Review. They co-founded Regulation2point0.org, a web portal on economic regulation.
"Peak oil" is one of those ideas that used to be the province of commodity speculators and zanier environmentalists, but is now entering the mainstream of the energy policy debate. The idea is simple on its face: For one reason or another (which one does it matter), we are approaching a limit to global oil production; thereafter, it must fall. Does this magic moment/number matter? Yes, if, as many suggest, the post-peak era is bound to be one of sharply higher energy prices that disrupt the global economy or, at very least, reduce the potential for economic growth just when the globe's have-nots seem to have a chance of joining the middle-class.
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Obama, Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich Fall Short on Tax 'Reform'
Tweet Share on Facebook February 29, 2012 Comment (3)Antony Davies is an affiliated senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University.
The candidates' economic policies are a hodgepodge of window dressing, shell games, and irrelevant tweaks. And this includes the president, who has found another bad idea on which to double-down: the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. Each year the AMT—a tax that was instituted in the 1960s to capture 158 multimillionaires—threatens to bring its financial house of cards down on millions of middle-class Americans.
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Temp Jobs Are Not the New Norm
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2012 Comment (1)Heidi Shierholz is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a regular contributor to its blog, Working Economics.
I keep getting asked about the growth in temporary help jobs in this recovery, and the people doing the asking seem to expect that I will be very concerned about it. I'm not.
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Why We Should Still Be Worried about a Double-Dip Recession
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2012 Comment (9)James Rickards is a hedge fund manager in New York City and the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis from Portfolio/Penguin. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesGRickards.
The late summer and fall of 2011 was filled with fears of a double-dip recession in the United States coming hard on the heels of the 2007-2009 recession, frequently referred to as the Great Recession. With improved economic news lately including lower unemployment, lower initial claims, higher growth, and higher stock prices, this recession talk has died down. That's why Lakshman Achuthan, the highly respected head of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, caused a stir last week when he repeated his earlier claim that a recession later this year was almost inevitable despite the better news.
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Lessons from U.S. Bank and Greek Bailouts
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2012 CommentJoseph Mason is the Moyse/LBA Chair of Banking at the Ourso School of Business at Louisiana State University and a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Former U.S. Treasury undersecretary for international affairs John Taylor's recent commentary "A Better Grecian Bailout" in February 22's Wall Street Journal was spot on, but five years too late. Replace the term "Grecian" with "Bank" and you have the main object lessons for the U.S. bank bailout that were, of course, not followed.
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Financial Crash Shifts Focus on Ethics in MBA Programs
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2012 CommentPaul Danos is dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
There have been innumerable references to ethical lapses among MBA degree holders during the financial crisis of the last few years and understandably so. I believe that what irks many people in retrospect is the fact that the rewards and punishments of the major players did not seem to be commensurate with their roles in the fiasco. Some attribute the disaster to unbridled greed run amok among the financiers, and others put the responsibility on flawed public policy or inadequate regulatory oversight.
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Don't Destroy Unemployment Insurance in the Name of 'Reform'
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2012 Comment (12)Chad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Last week in this space, Dean Baker pointed to the work-sharing provision in the payroll tax/unemployment insurance bill Congress passed Friday as a rare victory of common sense and bipartisanship in Washington—and it was. But beyond that, I don't see much evidence of bipartisanship in the way the two parties view unemployed workers or the Unemployment Insurance system.
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High Unemployment Not Primarily Driven by Lost Construction Jobs
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2012 Comment (1)Heidi Shierholz is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a regular contributor to its blog, Working Economics.
We often hear that today's high unemployment is being primarily driven by workers who were laid off from construction jobs, but it's not true. It is true that the bursting of our 8 trillion dollar housing bubble meant an enormous loss of construction jobs and that unemployment in construction is severe. But the bursting of the housing bubble didn't just cause home builders to radically downsize after overbuilding during the bubble. It also caused a massive drop in demand for goods and services (and therefore a drop in the demand for workers) due to households pulling back on spending because of the loss of wealth due to declining home values, and businesses cutting back on investments in plants and equipment because of a lack of demand for their goods and services. The drop in demand for workers was therefore widespread—which means that today's unemployment problem is not at all limited to construction.
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Obama Continues to Bury the Country in Spending
Tweet Share on Facebook February 21, 2012 Comment (3)Maurice McTigue is the vice president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Formerly a New Zealand cabinet minister and member of Parliament, McTigue helped dramatically reform the country's government and economy by implementing market-driven, pro-growth policies.
Friday marked the third anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but the day went by without much attention. There is at least one reason people should remember the stimulus, however, because we are still paying for it today.
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Federal Reserve Driven Inflation Hurts Savers
Tweet Share on Facebook February 21, 2012 Comment (2)James Rickards is a hedge fund manager in New York City and the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis from Portfolio/Penguin. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesGRickards.
Better late than never, some honesty has crept into the debate on Federal Reserve interest rate policy. Unfortunately the honesty consists of a candid warning by the Fed that savers will be victimized for the greater good of propping up asset values in housing and the stock market. The victimization takes the form of targeted inflation engineered by the Fed through zero interest rates and money printing. This is needed to bail out the banks, brokers, and builders who bet wildly and now need a more or less permanent rescue.
