By PAUL KRUGMANAugust 8, 2010 The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno. Meanwhile, a country that […]
By Max AbelsonJuly 13, 2010 | 9:25 p.m “Life is such a fucking disaster,” a prominent New York hedge fund manager said recently. “We all live in some kind of world we create for ourselves. And I think that what happened is that built into that world were very enlarged expectations about what life was […]
By Greg Mankiw This recession looks very different, and much more troubling, than those in the recent past. I wonder how this dramatic change in the nature of unemployment will alter traditional macroeconomic relationships, such as Okun’s Law and the Phillips curve. Some research suggests that the long-term unemployed put less downward pressure on inflation. […]
By CalculatedRisk 7/08/2010 02:16:00 PM This graph shows the 30 year fixed rate mortgage interest rate from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey®. The red line is a quarterly estimate from the BEA of the effective rate of interest on all outstanding mortgages (Owner- and Tenant-occupied residential housing). The effective rate on outstanding […]
By ALLEN JOHNSON, NEW ORLEANS July 2, 2010 THE man appointed by US President Barack Obama to manage BP’s oil spill disaster fund has warned that “there’s not enough money in the world” to pay all claims, and suggested home owners with plunging property values could lose out. The warning from prominent US lawyer Kenneth […]
By Casandra Andrews, Press-Register Published: Sunday, June 27, 2010, 5:32 AM In March, officers with the Bayou La Batre Police Department responded to 470 calls, according to their records. Two months later — after a ruptured well began gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, imperiling the fishing industry in five states and idling thousands […]
By Janet Marcel | Bayou CatholicSubmitted on June 23, 2010 SCHRIEVER, LA. — Fishing, swimming and interacting at all with the water off the coast of Louisiana is off-limits to residents, and their livelihoods and quality of life are suffering, said the pastor of Our Lady of the Isle Parish in Grand Isle. “They can’t […]
The oil giant says 20,000 of the 42,000 claims filed have been paid. But many affected financially by the oil spill report no responses, answers or relief. By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times June 14, 2010 Reporting from Gulf Shores, Ala. — Real estate agent Mike Reynolds had two desirable beachfront condos in escrow when […]
By Dmitry OrlovTuesday, June 15, 2010 In all of the descriptions of perilous situations that I have studied, arising during adventures on the high seas or in the high mountains, or during armed conflict, a single mistake rarely proves fatal. More often than not, death comes as a result of a sequence of bad choices […]
The sovereign debt crisis that began with a spark in Dubai and a fire in Greece, fanning out to a wildfire in southern Europe, is spreading again. And its impact is being felt far and wide. Fitch Ratings today warned Britain’s new Prime Minister David Cameron to quickly get his fiscal house in order, saying […]
