Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| How Germany Became the Savior of the Eurozone Germany's unemployment rate, which approached 10 percent in 2005, now approaches 5 percent, well below even the United States... |
| Stock Prices: The Fed Is Manipulating the Numbers Three rounds of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve have produced record-high stock prices, but real economic growth still remains below the levels expected in an economic recovery... |
| College Graduates: Are Obama's Policies Helping? The unemployment rate in 2012 for newly graduated men and women with bachelor's degrees was 8 percent, far higher than the 5 percent rate such young adults experienced in 2006... |
| The Ups and Downs of Reverse Mortgages The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported in 2012 that about 9.4 percent of reverse mortgages were at risk of default -- nearly double the default risk for ordinary home mortgages (about 5 percent), says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Business Startups Create the Majority of Economic Growth Each net job created by startup firms is estimated to increase state gross product by almost $1.2 million in a given year... |
| Economic Stimulus Does Not Work The debt-to-gross domestic product ratio cannot increase indefinitely because eventually the cost of maintaining public debt would end up draining all national income... |
| Retirement: To Work or Not to Work? Sixty percent of workers age 60 and older said they'd look for a different job after retiring from their current employment -- an increase from 57 percent in 2011... |
| Estonia: A Lesson for the U.S. Government In 2011, Estonia increased economic growth by 7.6 percent, which is an increase of 5.3 percent in economic growth in one year... |
| Homeownership and the American Dream Seventy-two percent of non-homeowners aspire to homeownership; 45 percent of renters say they rent because they can't afford to buy... |
| California: Can Oil Revive Its Economy? The recent discovery of up to 15 billion barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale formation could generate up to $4.5 billion in tax revenue for California by 2015... |
