August 28, 2008, 10:55 am
FINANCIAL TIMES : Billions of dollars of surplus revenues in Iran’s oil contingency fund are fuelling competition in the government of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president, as various organisations vie to demand extra cash... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:55 am
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH : China has resorted to stealth intervention in the currency markets to amass US dollars, using indirect means to hold down the yuan and ease the pain for its struggling exporters as the global slowdown engulfs the economy... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:55 am
NEW YORK TIMES : Americans enjoyed higher average income in 2006 for the first time since 2000, when the last economic expansion ended, the latest tax data show... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:55 am
SAFEHAVEN : Gold is believed to have bottomed. It crashed the support at $850 as predicted in the last update and plunged to hit a low $8 below our target range on a closing basis. Our target range for the drop was $800 - $825, and it bottomed at $792, with an intraday low at approximately $788... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:55 am
FINANCIAL SENSE : Last week I took a look at why consumers were so depressed. In short, my conclusion was that consumers were finally coming to terms with their balance sheets and this wakeup call: that you can’t borrow your way indefinitely to maintain ones standard of living... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
NAKED CAPITALISM : Go Willem Buiter! The London School of Economics prof and former Bank of England and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development official has been saying for some time that the Fed suffer from s "cognitive regulatory capture" and has been far too responsive to the needs of Wall Street... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
FINANCIAL TIMES : Denmark’s central bank has taken control of the country’s eighth largest retail lender to avert a systemic financial crisis – the first such move for 15 years... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
ECONLOG: LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS AND LIBERTY : Virtually all free-market economists are civil libertarians, staunch advocates of freedom of speech, religion, and the like. But in my experience, virtually all economists who eschew the "free-market" label are civil libertarians, too. Economists disagree about whether laissez-faire is the best economic policy... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
DEALBREAKER : Shares of Freddie Mac are soaring today, up more than 20 percent right now. The rise is being attributed to Freddie's success in selling $1 billion of three-month and $1 billion six-month notes in a weekly auction... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
WWW.KC.FRB.ORG : In a market-based financial system, banking and capital market development are inseparable... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
WSJ.COM: REAL TIME ECONOMICS : Warnings about crises sometimes come too early. That may have been the case with economist Raghuram Rajan. Three years ago at the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Mr. Rajan — then the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
CALCULATED RISK : S&P/Case-Shiller released their monthly Home Price Indices for June this morning. This includes prices for 20 individual cities, and two composite indices (10 cities and 20 cities). Note: This is not the quarterly national house price index - I'll have more on that later... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
THE KIRK REPORT : This year, the late summer market action is anything but limpid...Stocks are stuck in a typical late-summer environment...Driving to Disney World is now less expensive... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
A DASH OF INSIGHT : Public policy is determined by elected governmental officials and appointees who are responsible to them. This is the nature of accountability and representative government... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
CLUB FOR GROWTH : "If you talk to Warren, he'll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all—let the market work, however way it's going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it."... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
CARPE DIEM : Do a Google search for "rising food prices" and you'll get 391,000 results, while a search for "falling real food prices" gets about 144 results, a ratio of 2,700:1. Maybe we get so focused on the most recent year or two of rising prices for products like eggs that we lose sight of the longer term, historical trends... READ MORE

August 28, 2008, 10:20 am
CARPE DIEM : I am going to insist that all of the mayoral appointees buy American-made vehicles when they purchase new vehicles... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 9:40 pm
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH : It is looking increasingly likely that the UK will fall into recession, that is to say, aggregate output will fall outright. As the news on the economy has got darker, so the prevailing mood in the country has got gloomier. But are recessions really worth so much gnashing and grinding of teeth?... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
CNBC : Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and other financial companies are at risk of failure as the cost of raising capital soars at a time when the banks need to pay settlements over auction rate securities, David Kotok, chairman & chief investment officer from Cumberland Advisors, told CNBC Monday... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
SLATE :At first glance, Tom Vanderbilt's study of traffic, Traffic, seems like a perverse idea for a book. Imagine the tired commuter, pulling into his driveway, entering his house, and sitting down to read a chapter about the hell he just endured... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
PASTA&VINEGAR : One of the most interesting service you find on the street in Peru (and I am sure you can also get it in other countries) is the “llamadas”. It’s generally women or teenagers with a bundle of mobile phones and a stop-watch who act as pay phones... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
WALL STREET JOURNAL : SOME OF THE nation's top economists figure the government's response to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has come to a critical turning point: They expect Treasury will be forced to inject funds into the two firms... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
NEW YORK TIMES : New technology is pushing down prices and reversing conventional wisdom that U.S. fields were in decline... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:55 pm
FT/MAVERECON : As the petro-authoritarianism of Russia flexes its muscles and the economic prowess of China struts in Olympic glory, developing countries in the world might start rethinking about the lectures on democracy and development they have heard all these years from the West... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 9:40 pm
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE : A chicken pecks at the charred corpse of man lying near a house that, like every other dwelling in Kekhvi, has been burned down. Scenes of grotesque desolation mark this village in Georgia, yet it is a popular destination for at least one group... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
YALE ENVIRONMENT 360 : For the past two months, it has been hard to avoid T. Boone Pickens, the 80-year-old Texas oilman, billionaire, and former corporate raider. First, he was all over the TV news introducing his grand... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 12:00 pm
SLATE : For many business owners, getting the most out of staff is a perennial problem. In the case of fruit farmers, perhaps perennial is the wrong word: Workers show up for the summer harvest only. In a couple of weeks, the pickers here in Great Britain will be heading home, usually to a university somewhere in Eastern Europe... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 8:00 am
ASIA TIMES ONLINE : Pakistan has two options. The country can give in to militancy or it can conduct military operations against it, influential advisor to the Interior Ministry, Rahman Malik, said on Thursday. And the government is not going to negotiate with militants, he added... READ MORE

August 27, 2008, 6:50 am
LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE : There are potential improvements that can be made to Michigan's roads just by changing how things are run (and who runs them) without necessarily increasing road spending. Additionally, there are many ways the state could do the same things for less money ... READ MORE

August 26, 2008, 9:45 pm
DILBERT.COM : If a weather expert tells you what the weather will be on a specific day next year, you can safely ignore him. If he tells you a hurricane is heading your way, it's a good idea to get out of the way, even if the storm ends up turning. That's playing the odds... READ MORE