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The Real Reason Ben Bernanke Resists the Gold Standard
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2012 Comment (20)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.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the most powerful central banker in history, had a long and distinguished career as an academic prior to joining the Fed. He is routinely described as one of the leading scholars of the monetary causes of the Great Depression of 1929-1940, ranking only behind Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz whose magisterial A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 is considered the definitive work on that subject. Bernanke's work is no less distinguished and his book Essays on the Great Depression is essential reading for those trying to understand how Bernanke applies the lessons of the past to policymaking in the new depression.
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Blame Budget Austerity for Poor GDP Growth
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2012 Comment (11)Eileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
As the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus continues to wind down, the effects on the US economy are showing up in the economic data. Coming out of a steep recession, the economy should be experiencing robust output, or GDP, growth. Output growth of 3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 helped bring the unemployment rate down. However, the government's announcement that output growth fell to 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 should give policy makers pause. The economy needs to grow by at least 2.5 percent just to keep unemployment from rising. Thus this latest figure on GDP growth does not auger well for the job market, which has seen a steady rise over the last few weeks in initial unemployment claims. In the face of weaker demand, Investment spending by business is slowing. Cutbacks in government spending at the federal as well as state and local levels are already hurting GDP growth. In the absence of federal revenue sharing with the states--the first time the federal government has not had such a program when unemployment is above 7 percent--state and local government expenditures have fallen for seven consecutive quarters.
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The Story Behind the Recent Jobless Claims
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2012 CommentDavid Park is cofounder and chairman of Job Creators Alliance.
For those looking for reasons for optimism in the recent unemployment data, there have been some mixed messages. While initial weekly jobless claims fell last week by 2,000, the total number of claims was still well above what economists were hoping for. The upward spike in jobless claims, to 386,000, stands in stark contrast to the 369,000 at the time of the March employment report.
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Student Loan Interest Rates Just the Tip of College Cost Iceberg
Tweet Share on Facebook April 26, 2012 Comment (7)David Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council.
Congress and the presidential candidates are debating whether to let the rates on student loans double to 6.8 percent. This issue has grabbed headlines, but it's little more than a sideshow. Even if rates are kept down, the student loan program doesn't come close to meeting the challenge of soaring tuition. It doesn't allow America's youth to acquire the skills they need to compete in a tough global marketplace.
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What the CBO Really Said About Obama's Budget
Tweet Share on Facebook April 25, 2012 Comment (2)Chad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Congressional Budget Office issued its analysis of the economic impact of the president's 2013 budget last Friday, generating headlines and press releases that the president's budget would hurt the economy. Unfortunately, too few people asked the critical question, "Compared to what?"
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America's Upcoming Economic Train Wrecks: Tax Hikes, Budget Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2012 Comment (7)David Sampson is the president and CEO of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. He served in the George W. Bush administration as the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce and as assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.
As property casualty insurers, evaluating risk is our core competency. For instance, auto insurers know from statistical evidence that there will be almost 30,000 car accidents each day.
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Eric Cantor's Temporary Tax Cuts Are Bad Economics
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2012 Comment (4)Veronique de Rugy is a professor and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
In January 2013, the 22 million small business owners who pay their taxes through the personal income tax will see their top marginal tax rate increase to 41 percent.
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The Hidden Role of Gold at the IMF
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2012 Comment (3)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 International Monetary Fund completed their spring meetings last weekend amid communiqués and good feelings about what had been accomplished. There was optimism about improvement in the global economy albeit tempered by warnings that risks remained. Christine Lagarde, the organization's managing director, was upbeat about new financing pledges to help build an IMF firewall to prevent contagion from countries in financial distress.
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Citigroup's Shareholders Stand Up for the 99.9 Percent
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 Comment (1)Eileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research
In a wake-up call to corporate boards across the United States, Citigroup's shareholders recently took advantage of the new "say-on-pay" provisions of the Dodd-Frank law to vote down CEO Vikram Pandit's $15 million pay package. Shareholders have been surprisingly quiet as corporate executives, investment bankers, and investment fund managers have captured a huge and rapidly growing slice of corporate profits. The massive increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades as the nation's gains in productivity have gone to further enrich the top 1 percent has been well-documented. Less well known is that the lion's share of those income gains have gone to the 0.1 percent at the tippy top. The shareholders at Citigroup have said, "Enough!"
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The Advantages of a Traditional On-Campus MBA Experience
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 CommentPaul Danos is dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
The great business schools of the world have long traditions of putting groups of smart students together on campus with thought-leading professors and fostering a concentrated and intense period of learning. The campus and all of its trimmings is very important for that special chemistry to occur: One gets knowledge from a master, a new network of outstanding leaders, new inspiration and values, and takes deep dives into the inner-workings of a field with an expert. The prime example of that kind of learning experience is the classic two-year, full-time MBA program at a top business school.
