04 | February | 2013

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

America’s job-creating energy miracle

Mark J. Perry | February 4, 2013, 4:42 pm

While last Friday’s employment report reflects an economy struggling to create jobs during an extended, sub-par “jobless recovery,” it’s been a much healthier employment picture in one of America’s most successful “shovel-ready” job-creating industries: Oil and Gas Extraction. The top … read more >

Foreign and Defense Policy, Latin America

Iran-Venezuela money laundering confirmed?

Roger Noriega | February 4, 2013, 4:19 pm

An Iranian man caught by authorities “trying to enter Germany with a check worth about $70 million” is the chairman of a suspicious Venezuelan bank that is wholly owned by Iran’s black-listed Saderat Bank. Even as US diplomats rush to … read more >

Image Credit: James Hamilton and the Atlanta Fed

Pethokoukis, Economics, U.S. Economy

Maybe this helps explain why the stock market has been doing so well

James Pethokoukis | February 4, 2013, 3:09 pm

I know the stock market likes to climb a wall of worry, but perhaps that’s not true at the moment. Less concern about the euro and perhaps less concern about the US economy could be boosting investor sentiment. From Economist … read more >

Pethokoukis, Economics, U.S. Economy

Is rising income inequality actually a good sign for the economy?

James Pethokoukis | February 4, 2013, 2:54 pm

Economist Robert Gordon paints a gloomy picture of America’s economic future with his provocative paper “Is U.S. economic growth over?” In addition to sniffing at the recent pace and quality of innovation today vs. America’s golden age — they produced the … read more >

Carpe Diem

Disturbing green energy facts of the day

Mark J. Perry | February 4, 2013, 2:54 pm

1. Tennessee Department of Revenue officials estimate that at least 530 electric vehicles have been registered in Tennessee in the past two years, based on the number of buyers seeking a state tax rebate of $2,500, in addition to a federal … read more >

Economics, Monetary Policy, Pethokoukis

Why the Fed isn’t yet monetizing US debt

James Pethokoukis | February 4, 2013, 2:20 pm

Buying and selling government securities is mostly how the Fed conducts monetary policy. Sometimes it creates money — using it to purchase Treasuries to lower interest rates — and sometimes it destroys money — selling the Treasury debt it owns … read more >

Image Credit: World Economic Forum (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Economics, Monetary Policy, Pethokoukis

After Bernanke: Should Israel’s central banker become America’s?

James Pethokoukis | February 4, 2013, 1:20 pm

By all accounts, Stanley Fischer has done a marvelous job running Israel’s central bank since 2005 and helping navigate the global financial crisis. But now, at age 69, he’s stepping down, and some observers like David Warsh think Fischer might make a … read more >

Economics, Health Care

9 big roadblocks to the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act

Henrik Temp | February 4, 2013, 12:51 pm

In a new article for National Review Online, AEI health care scholar Thomas Miller outlines nine “pressure points” that could delay or significantly impact the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which is scheduled to take full effect on January … read more >

Economics, Pethokoukis, U.S. Economy

How to stop the robots from taking all our jobs

James Pethokoukis | February 4, 2013, 11:52 am

For more than 200 years, the Luddites have been wrong. Technological advances have created a far wealthier West and millions of new jobs. As machines became more capable, so did humans, moving up the value ladder. But must it always be … read more >

Economics, Regulation

The truth about ‘free Wi-Fi’

Jeffrey Eisenach | February 4, 2013, 8:56 am

Today’s front page story in the Washington Post—provocatively headlined “Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public Wi-Fi networks”—will surely get a lot of attention. But there’s little cause for alarm: The story is almost entirely fiction. The … read more >