We Can’t Inflate Our Way Out of the Debt Crisis … So What CAN We Do? – Naked Capitalism
But why raise taxes and cut essential services when we can stop unnecessary wars and unnecessary interest costs instead?
The Sham Recovery – Robert Reich
Are we finally in a recovery? Who’s “we,” kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us — small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans — forget it.
Fragile riches – Rolfe Winkler
Leverage amplifies gains and losses — and with further deleveraging needed and interest rates having nowhere to go but up, there’s more stacking up on the loss side of the scale. The newly richer may be feeling good about their wallets right now, but it may not last.
Centrally Planned Suburbia – Matthew Yglesias
Not being a libertarian or a conservative of any sort, I’m happy to just take it for granted that you’re never going to have a genuinely “small government” approach to the built environment. But I would sort of be interested to see, as an exercise, someone try to put together a serious, genuinely libertarian view of how cities and towns should be built—what’s the absolute minimum we could get away with.
Spotlight on the Non-Recovery in Texas; Heads Still Buried In The Sand – Mish
It is pretty amazing when you can put a positive spin on horrendous data like this:”In February, the state’s sales tax collections were down 8.8 percent compared with the same month a year earlier. Though still in the red, the February figure looked better than the previous months’ double-digit decreases that have put the state 13 percent behind last year’s collections six months into the budget year.”
Good Grief.
Time, It Turns Out, Isn’t on Their Side – The New York Times
Mr. Bergman said. “I wrote back that I’d like to explain how I could do the position. I said: ‘I would never take a job I don’t want. You reached out to me.’ ” After two e-mail messages and three calls with no response, he gave up. “If I don’t get something soon, I’m heading for the mall — Home Depot, Burger King. I need to work.”
Frugal San Francisco – The New York Times
At first glance, San Francisco would seem to be precisely the wrong place to do this. According to Forbes magazine’s 2009 survey of America’s most expensive cities, San Francisco ranks fourth, and according to 2008 Census figures, San Franciscans have fewer children than the rest of the state. The hills are rough on strollers, and the homeless people, strip clubs and ubiquitous pot smoke can challenge a protective parent’s patience. Do the math, and it looks crazy to take a baby there for vacation.
China’s Property: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble – Time
Some economists worry that oversupply in both the residential and commercial real estate markets has already prompted a downturn in pricing, and that the recent government initiatives could lead to a hard landing. In Beijing, vast swaths of commercial space sit vacant — including floors of retail space right next to the iconic Water Cube, the swimming venue for the 2008 Olympics. According to Colliers, commercial rents are now a shade lower than they were last year and residential prices have also begun to weaken. Residential prices, according to China Reality Research data, peaked late last year and are now headed down.
