Education Financing

From a New York Times op-ed on Education Financing:








Fiscal Cliff



End Game

A couple articles predicting impending economic shock:

Yesterday I was watching a clip of “This Week With George Stephanopoeus” which had Paul Krugman as a guest and I read Larry Summers’ new article in the FT and when you look at what their economic prescriptions are it’s clear they only see two options: borrowing or depression. For these guys there are no other options and I realize that they have no concept of the “end game”. When your options are borrow and be happy or don’t borrow and suffer, the choice is a no brainer. But, there are more than two choices. A sovereign can’t borrow forever. There comes a point when they can’t and then the end game sets in which is far more horrific than any pain caused by “austerity.” Let’s not pretend that there are only two plausible scenarios out there.


Crony Capitalism

Here’s an article in the WSJ about crony capitalism.




On Spain ECB COI

From the WSJ, and article about the Spain bailout:

“Brimming with cheap three-year loans provided by the European Central Bank, Spanish lenders this year have been among the few buyers of Spanish sovereign bonds. Their heavy buying had helped keep a leash on bond yields, slowing their steady rise.

But Spanish banks largely have exhausted their stockpiles of ECB funds, analysts say. Now the question is whether, after getting recapitalized by the government, they will keep buying sovereign bonds.”

So banks get money from ECB, then they buy sovereign debt, then the Spanish government gets money and decides who to give it to? Well luckily I’m sure officials base their decisions on who to give funds to SOLELY based on need and NEVER consider helping the banks that buy the most sovereign debt. I’m glad we can construct all of these immensely valuable conflicts of interest and trust in human integrity that it will all work out in an honest and fair fashion. I think economists understand why that is…

Daily Irrelevent Wisconsin Spin

From U.S. News and World Reports, an article about different flavors of retirement funding. Here’s my favorite sentence:

Wisconsin voters may not have wildly cheered Republic Governor Scott Walker’s curbs on union rights. But they understand the financial times we live in, and clearly felt (aided by enormous recall campaign contributions from conservative groups) his actions did not justify his recall.

Yeah, I guess that’s one way to look at it…or you could just say “Wisconsin voters voted to limit union rights” which would have emphasized the point rather than draw questions about the author’s point of view.