Crash Survival Zone

The recession is nearing its end. At least, it seems to be. A generally improving trend in the economic data has forecasters saying the downturn will turn into an upturn sometime between early this summer (the optimistic view) and late next winter (the pessimistic one).

But here’s my assessment: So what? A recession is defined by [...]

Home prices are likely to fall for the next year, then stabilize, with a rebound in 2012 as the overall economy takes off again

Americans have not seen a boring housing market since the last millennium. You know—the average, ordinary kind of market where supply just about matches demand, prices are steady, and real estate ceases [...]

By Dean Baker

As every backcountry hiker recognizes, you must first know where you are before you can figure out how to get to where you want to be. While it is important to know where we want to go, progressives often badly misunderstand where we are now.

Specifically, much of the anger of progressives is wrongly [...]

By Brad DeLong

Let me make five points to eliminate or refute, or at least to fight against or lay down a marker that there is, well, call it “confusion” about what the right state of the American macroeconomy should be.
My first point is that over the past six months the economy has been a severe [...]

By Alan S. Blinder

Some people with hypersensitive sniffers say the whiff of future inflation is in the air. What’s that, you say? Aren’t we experiencing deflation right now? The answer is yes. But, apparently, for those who are sufficiently hawkish, the recent activities of the Federal Reserve conjure up visions of inflation.

The central bank is [...]

By William Greider

The most disturbing thing about Barack Obama’s call for financial reform was the way in which the president falsified our predicament. He tried to make it sound as though everyone was implicated in the financial breakdown and therefore no one was really to blame. “A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street [...]

Louis Licata has shelved plans to hire three more employees for his Cleveland law firm. Jeannie Macone, of Florida, is cutting back on inventory for her trinket and home décor business. In Ohio, Patrick Allen has slashed employee travel and begun paying cash for work dinners with clients of the marketing firm that he started [...]

By Paul Krugman
Would the Obama administration’s plan for financial reform do what has to be done? Yes and no.
Yes, the plan would plug some big holes in regulation. But as described, it wouldn’t end the skewed incentives that made the current crisis inevitable.
Let’s start with the good news.
Our current system of financial regulation dates back [...]

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who accurately forecast the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting economic contraction, has become famous for his pessimism—he has been the gloomiest of the doomsayers. Which is what makes his current outlook surprising: Roubini believes that the Obama administration’s policy makers—and especially the much-maligned Tim Geithner—have [...]

by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

While most pundits are still grasping at anecdotal “green shoots” to celebrate the beginning of a “recovery,” the hard data just released by the Federal Reserve reveals a continuing collapse of unprecedented dimensions.

It’s all in the Fed’s Flow of Funds Report for the first quarter of 2009, which I’ve posted on [...]