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It Is Not the Right Workers We Are Lacking, It Is Work
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2012 CommentHeidi Shierholz is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a regular contributor to its blog, Working Economics.
These days we often hear the claim that one of the reasons hiring remains so low in this recovery is that employers can't find workers with the education and skills they need. For example, in his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said that he hears from many business leaders who "want to hire in the United States but can't find workers with the right skills."
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To Lower College Costs, Obama Should Focus on Supply and Demand
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2012 Comment (5)Robert G. Hansen is senior associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University.
Last Friday, President Obama visited the University of Michigan and outlined a new plan aimed at limiting tuition increases at U.S. universities. There is no question that tuition increases have been high—as any parent or student paying the bills will attest. Earlier, in his State of the Union address, the president hinted at his approach: "Let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down." The 4,000 Wolverines listening roared their approval.
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Transparency Only the First Step to Fixing Finance
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2012 CommentRobert 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.
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Barack Obama's Marionette Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2012 CommentBruce Yandle is an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences.
According to Friday's Commerce Department report, the economy improved slightly during the last quarter, but more importantly, we now have an estimate for 2011's overall economic growth, and it does not look pretty. The number is a dismal 1.7 percent, which looks even worse when compared with 2010's 3.0 percent. But we should keep in mind that some serious 2011 shocks pushed the growth numbers lower. There was magnified tax and regulatory uncertainty in Washington, a massive Japanese earthquake which caused supply interruptions, southern European credit meltdowns, a trembling Euro community, and the first-ever modern U.S. credit downgrade, which all pushed the numbers lower.
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The Financial War Against Iran
Tweet Share on Facebook January 30, 2012 Comment (4)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.
In March, 2009, I joined a group of sixty officials from the armed forces, intelligence community, U.S. Treasury, think tanks and Wall Street at a top-secret weapons laboratory near Washington, D.C., to conduct the first ever war game in which the weapons were not missiles and bombs but stocks, bonds, and currencies.
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United Kingdom Shows That Austerity Does Not Grow the Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 30, 2012 Comment (2)Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and has worked for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council. His latest book is The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.
The Federal Reserve Board issued new projections for the economy last week and they are not pretty. It projects the unemployment rate will still be 8.2 percent at the end of this year, 7.4 percent at the end of 2013, and 6.7 percent at the end of 2014. To put this in context, the unemployment rate peaked at 7.6 percent in the 1990-91 recession and never got above 6.3 percent in the 2001 recession. The Fed is projecting that seven years after the onset of the current recession, the unemployment rate will still be higher than at any point in the last recession.
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How to Fix the Underwater Mortgage Problem
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2012 Comment (6)John Vogel is an adjunct professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.
Housing continues to be a major drag on the U.S. economy. Many factors prevent this problem from being solved, but a key obstacle has been arguments based on moral hazard. From the outset of this crisis, politicians and angry citizens have railed against rewarding the "bad behavior" of homeowners who took on mortgage debt that they could not afford.
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Federal Reserve Abandons Core Consumer Price Index
Tweet Share on Facebook January 26, 2012 Comment (3)David Shulman is a retired Wall Street executive who is now a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. He is also affiliated with Baruch College (CUNY) and the University of Wisconsin.
Amidst all the hoopla surrounding the Federal Reserve's announcement yesterday of long term policy, the Fed statement was very clear that the relevant measure is the deflator for personal consumption expenditures, which is the broadest measure of prices in the economy. The Fed made a fundamental policy change in moving away from the concept of core Consumer Price Index which excludes food and energy, as its key inflation measure. Their exact words were,
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For Better or Worse, Don't Expect Action on the Economy This Year
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2012 CommentChad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The United States faces daunting economic and budget challenges, but economic policy and budget policy will likely run on autopilot this year in the run-up to November's elections. That means lawmakers will continue to neglect important national priorities, but it also means we can be grateful they probably won't make things much worse.
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Obama’s State of the Union Speech: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2012 Comment (6)David Shulman is a retired Wall Street executive who is now a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. He is also affiliated with Baruch College (CUNY) and the University of Wisconsin.
There was a lot to like and a lot not like about President Obama’s State of the Union address last night. First the good: his proposal to pay outstanding teachers more and replace poor teachers is long overdue. However, whether his allies in the teachers’ unions allow him to accomplish this worthy goal remains to be seen. Keeping with the education theme the idea of tying support for community colleges with job specific training programs certainly makes sense.
