Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| How We Underestimate Long-Term Unemployment In 2007, the average unemployed person who dropped out of the labor force looked for a job for nine weeks; by 2011, that figure had risen to over 21 weeks... |
| Study: Money Can Buy Happiness Data show that the relationship between wellbeing and income rises linearly as income rises... |
| Demographic Decline Has Serious Implications In the developed world, and even in the developing world, fertility is below the 2.1 total fertility rate needed for populations to remain stable, meaning that populations are declining... |
| Myths vs. Facts: California's Claims about Texas' Economy Between 2006 and 2012, California had a net loss of 359,000 jobs while Texas had a net gain of more than 1 million jobs... |
| The Federal Financial Triangle The Federal Reserve, by buying long-term mortgage-backed securities and long-term Treasury debt, is creating interest rate risk on its own balance sheet... |
| Lessons from the Cyprus Bailout Cyprus should never have proposed a tax on small insured bank deposits, but should have used its financial crisis as an excuse to leave the euro... |
| Federal Reserve's Huge Balance Sheet Poses Risk If it follows its current path, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet will not return to its historical norm of around 6 percent of gross domestic product until 2022... |
| Are Corporate Bonds Worth a Look? The value of U.S. corporate bonds issued was $1.36 trillion in 2012, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Student Borrowers Delay Major Purchases as Debt Mounts In 2012, 22 percent of 30 year olds with a history of student debt had or previously had a mortgage, compared to 24 percent of 30 year olds who never had any student debt... |
| Seven Reasons the Economy Could Be Headed Into Recession Since the end of the recession in June 2009 the economy grew 2.4 percent in 2010, 1.8 percent in 2011 and 2.2 percent in 2012, with the fourth quarter sinking to a mere 0.4 percent... |
