Economy

This Thursday October 27, 2011, the Asset Building Program and Economic Growth Program are co-hosting an event featuring the work of Robert Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos. Frank’s book The Darwin Economy seeks to complicate our views on a few of the basic tenets of economic thought: the role of competition in the free market and the theory of the invisible hand.

Occupy Wall Street is a carnival. Both detractors and supporters say so. The most amusing part of the show is watching the rush to join it. When Deepak Chopra and Suze Orman endorse the cause, you have to wonder about its revolutionary bona fides. Democrats have also flung themselves in the direction of Zuccotti Park—but in their pursuit of the movement they may damage themselves and hinder the protests’ potential to do tangible good.

Occupy Wall Street is not the next Tea Party movement. Broadly speaking, it has many of the same sentiments that led to the creation of the Tea Party--frustration and anger at a system that is failing many of its citizens, desire for a better way of life, and the belief that ordinary Americans can bring about change to the status quo. Yet Occupy Wall Street is a movement based solely on emotions, dreams, and ideas--perhaps well-intentioned ideas, but not tangible ones that can actually lead to revolutionary change.

Bashing green energy has recently become a major Republican talking point. Darrell Issa, once a champion of green-job stimulus funds for his district, held a House oversight committee hearing titled "How Obama's Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs." Rush Limbaugh says green energy is a "slush fund" that takes money from unwitting taxpayers under the guise of saving the planet and rewards Democratic donors.

We usually speak of "alternative energy sources" as positives. Across the developing world, however, these "alternatives" take the forms of dung and wood for cooking, candles and kerosene for lighting. Governments have done an absolutely dismal job of rolling out access to modern energy.

It is now a foregone conclusion that China’s economy will become the biggest in the world sometime very soon. According to the World Bank, the size of China’s economy is $10.1 trillion, compared with $14.6 trillion for the U.S., based on purchasing power parity (which adjusts exchange rates to account for the different prices people pay for goods and services across countries). But China is narrowing the gap in a hurry. Over the past 10 years, the annual real growth of China’s gross domestic product averaged 10.5 percent, compared with 1.7 percent in the U.S.

Notwithstanding repeated attempts at monetary and fiscal stimulus since 2009, the United States remains mired in what is by far its worst economic slump since that of the 1930s.¹  More than 25 million working-age Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, the employment-to-population ratio lingers at an historic low of 58.3 percent,² business investment continues at historically weak levels, and consumption expenditure remains weighed down by massive private sector debt overhang left by the bursting of the housing and credit bubble a bit over three years ago.

-- This is a guest post by Jay Pelosky, Principal, J2Z Advisory, LLC.  It was originally posted on the Huffington Post. --

While much has transpired in financial markets over the past quarter, much remains unclear about the road ahead. Bond yield melt down, equity trap door decline, financial repression, sovereign debt infection, all have become front-page news. Does this mean all is in the price and one can go bargain hunting? Not so fast remains the counsel, not so fast.

My German 3 summer school instructor at Berkeley once pulled me aside after class to accuse me of having a deep-seated hatred toward all things German. Irritated, I told her, “Yeah, that’s why I’m spending my summer learning your damn language.”

More than 20 years later, my German-language skills are just as lacking as before, but my relationship to the Fatherland is as complicated as ever. I don’t hate Germany. But, apart from being fond of Berlin (whose openly gay mayor calls it “poor but sexy”), I don’t exactly love Germany either.

With more than 14 million Americans out of work and the U.S. facing the prospect of a double-dip recession, it’s heartening to know that Democrats and Republicans agree on at least one way to kick-start growth: support small business. “Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin,” President Barack Obama said in his Sept. 8 address to Congress, unveiling a $447 billion jobs bill.