South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Around The Dial – April 11, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• The New York Times  reports on welfare during the recession.
• The Baseline Scenario explains “the impossibility of defense cuts.”
• Working Economics points out the problems with 401(k) plans.
• Matt Stoller argues that “corruption” is “responsible for 80% of your cell phone bill.”
• Matt Taibbi thinks the “JOBS Act couldn’t suck worse.”

Midweek Humor: Tax Edition

Citizens for Tax Justice has some pointed fun with the inequities embedded in the federal tax code.

The Great Housing Debate

Writing at Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller describes the policy debate over housing as a clash between “handcuffs” and “hope and change.”

There are two schools of thought on fixing the housing market.  The first is the Tim Geithner school, which we’ll call the “hope and change” school.  Hope and changers, who occupy most elite positions in the administration, in banks, at the Fed, in the economics establishment in Congress, at housing nonprofits like the Center for Responsible Lending, in regulatory agencies, believe that the housing market will come back when the economy returns.  Foreclosure problems may be tragic, or overblown, or not, but ultimately are incidental to fundamentals, like matching housing supply to demand or increasing employment through boosts in aggregate demand.  Warren Buffett is probably the most famous member of this school.
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The second is the “law and order” or “handcuffs” school, which has (loosely) as members people like former FDIC chief Sheila Bair, former SIGTARP Neil Barofsky, iconoclastic investors such as Bill Frey, foreclosure fraud defense attorneys, Congressional actors like Maxine Waters, criminologists like Bill Black and various securitization experts and bloggers.  The handcuffs believes that law and order is not incidental to the breakdown of the housing market, but is central to it.

Around The Dial – April 10, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• The Center for American Progress has a handy index of job creation policies.
• Naked Capitalism discusses inequality and its consequences with James Galbraith.
• Jared Bernstein lays out two competing visions of American society and government.
• Laura Tyson defends American multi-national corporations as a source policy attention.
• The NC Budget & Tax Center traces public disinvestment in higher education.

Reviewing March Employment Data

Heather Boushey and Adam Hersh of the Center for American Progress summarize the national employment report for March.

Some of the moderated growth in March may be due to unseasonably warm winter weather in parts of the country, which could have pulled some economic activity earlier into the year. Overall, though, 2012 registered the strongest first quarter of job growth since the first quarter of 2006—at the peak of the real estate bubble—and stronger than any other first quarter of jobs growth since the 1990s boom economy.
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Still, millions of middle-class families continue to struggle uphill due to the hole left in our labor market by the Great Recession that began in December 2007, and the recovery’s moderate pace and unequal distribution mean that growth is not reaching enough people.
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Although a number of factors outside the United States are blowing headwinds against our recovery, the conservative budget for fiscal year 2013 passed on a party-line vote in the House of Representatives last week poses a political threat to growth, job creation, and financial security and opportunity for middle-class families.