Not allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy under any conditions is simply barbaric, just one step away from debtors prisons.

Economists agree on relatively few topics when it comes to macroeconomics, but we do have some topics that generate something approaching consensus.  One topic of general agreement among economists is immigration.  Most economist are convinced that immigration is good.  Of course, this is in sharp contrast with popular opinion.  So, we need to keep trying… Read more

Brian Caplan has a nice little model on employment markets that really does explain a lot of what we see: In equilibrium, nice employers hire the rich, and mean employers hire the poor. It makes sense: Nice employers need rich workers they can trust, and poor workers misbehave unless there’s a mean employer on their… Read more

I was in Peoria yesterday to give a talk to the City Council. Peoria is a suburb of Phoenix, but it is intent on having its own identity and economy. The City has a population pushing 150,000 spread over an amazing 180 square miles. They like their open space in Peoria. It’s a great looking… Read more

Ventura California’s City Manager, Rick Cole, has had two recent pieces at newgeography.com, here and here, titled “The War for Jobs.” In these pieces, he outlines some important changes in California cities’ environment, and what Ventura is doing to attract or grow jobs, because, as he says, governments don’t create jobs. Rick’s right. Governments don’t… Read more

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Larry Summers are having a heated exchange over the impacts of unemployment insurance on jobs, and they are both being stupid. The WSJ claims that extending unemployment insurance is causing unemployment, and that their opinion is consistent with Summers’ past statements. Unemployment insurance can exacerbate unemployment in times of… Read more

I’ve seen lots of proposals on how to accelerate our economic recovery, but I haven’t seen any investment tax credit proposals. Maybe there are some out there, but I haven’t seen them. The idea has merit, and now might be a good time to implement it. Business investment has been extraordinarily weak for a long… Read more

Today’s data releases highlight the challenges facing those who claim we are in a recovery. The December retail sales volume, down 0.3 percent from November, was perhaps the most shocking number to the optimists out there. This was almost a full percentage point below “consensus expectations,” which were for 0.5 percent growth. So much for… Read more

Many economists declared the recession over after the third-quarter GDP release. We at CERF disagreed and pointed out that almost every long recession has had at least one quarter of positive growth during the recession. We also pointed out that many of the reasons for the relatively strong third quarter were temporary. We just didn’t… Read more

I had to pause when I read George Melloan’s Wall Street Journal piece today. Seems he sees a conspiracy between Treasury and the Federal Reserve to fund the national deficit with bank funds to the detriment of business and economic growth. In Melloan’s world, the co-conspirators do this by regulation, giving banks little choice but… Read more