Reads for Dec 18

Economics & Finance

• Paul Krugman at NYT: Inflating Your Way to Prosperity; Slow Learners; Lake Wobegon, Europe; No, It's Not The Welfare State; Chronic Confusion
• Brad DeLong: "Expansionary" Austerity in Europe
• Economist: Are Persistent Trade Deficits a Bad Thing?
• Paul Bergin at the SF Federal Reserve: Asset Price Booms and Current Account Deficits
• Kash Mansori at The Street Light: House Prices and Current Account Deficits; More House Prices and Current Account Deficits
• Global Macro Monitor at The Big Picture: Italy Works 20% More Hours than Germany or France
• Uneasy Money: Deutsche Bank Gets It, Why Can’t Mrs. Merkel?
• Scott Sumer at The Money Illusion: Like deer caught in headlights (talking about the Fed)
• Washingtons Blog at The Big Picture: FBI Estimates 80% of Mortgage Fraud Involved Industry Insiders
• Calculated Risk: Research: New paper on the role of investors in the housing bubble
• Michael Olenick at Naked Capitalism: NAR’s Big Miss on Home Sales Underscores Lack of Transparency and Accuracy in Mortgage/Housing Data
• Tamara Keith at NPR's It's All Politics Blog: GOP Objects To 'Millionaires Surtax'; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much [via]
• Mark Thoma at Economist's View: Percentage Growth in Annual Wages and Salaries [also see]
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution: Roman Empire More Equal than the United States
• Brad DeLong: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? No, High Unemployment Is Not Primarily The Result of "Generous" Unemployment Insurance Benefits
• Chad Stone at CBPP's Off The Charts Blog: It’s the Great Recession, Not the Great Vacation, That’s Responsible for High Unemployment
• Mike Konczal at Rortybomb: What is the Real Unemployment Rate and How Could We Tell?
• Macromania: Beveridge Curves for 36 U.S. Cities (Updated)
• Ben Walsh at Business Insider: A Bunch Of Academics Think They've Figured Out How To Tell If A Hedge Fund Will Outperform The Market
• Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture: Interest Rates: 1831-2011; US Housing Prices Mirror Japan's Experience; Beware The Retail Hype; Retail Sales Disappoint on False Black Friday Reports
• Cardiff Garcia at FT Alphaville: The Decline of "Safe" Assets

To wrap up this section, here's an interesting comment by William Cohan in this FDL Book Salon on his book "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World":

Goldman actually almost went out of business many times in its history; it is very good at getting into trouble — and also very good at getting out of trouble

...and he also notes:

actually i go through chapter and verse of the many frauds that Goldman has committed or participated in over the years

Should make for some interesting reading.

Energy & Environment, Food Security, Climate Change

• Jonathan Callahan at The Oil Drum has a must-read post on the oil boom in North Dakota and the caution one should exercise from history: The Bakken Boom - A Modern-Day Gold Rush
• A. E. Berman at The Oil Drum: A Reality Check on U.S. Oil Imports and the Shale Revolution for Mortimer Zuckerman
• Coral Davenport at National Journal: Heads in the Sand
• Real Climate: Global Temperature News - their focus is on this interesting paper by Foster and Rahmstorf, whose abstract says:

  We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr−1. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Niño/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.

Healthcare

• Jon Walker at Firedoglake: Ezra Klein Then and Now on Healthcare Exchanges

Education

• David Hummels et al. in Vox EU: Offshoring, inequality, and the value of college degrees [via]

Miscellaneous

• John Helzer at Seeking Alpha: Focus On The Correlation Between Semiconductor Billings And The S&P 500
• John Helzer at Seeking Alpha: Will History Repeat? ECRI's Recession Call

That's it for this weekend.