Archives: March 2007

In Praise of Subprime Mortgages

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 29, Categories: Financial markets

Austan Goolsbee, an economist at UChicago, had a nice piece in today's NYT with the headline "'Irresponsible' Mortgages have Opened Doors to Many of the Excluded". He went on to...

A Race to the Top

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 27, Categories: Trade

I've been reading a recent paper by David Dollar, World Bank Country Director, China and Mongolia. It's got a lot of good stuff in it, but here's something he wrote...

Startup School 2007

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 26, Categories: Future

I spoke on Saturday to the Startup School, held this year at Stanford University. My second time at this, great fun , and I think they will be posting a...

The Real Stock Chart

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 19, Categories: Financial markets

As I was working on my commentary this week, I constructed a stock chart the way it is supposed to be: 1) Total return on the S&P 500, rather than...

Subprime Borrowers are Suffering for Our Sins

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 16, Categories: Financial markets

Anyone who is interested in understanding the subprime mess should read Peter Coy's story, "Under The Fed's Hammer How Fed rate hikes have turned into a regressive tax on weak...

Global Warming and Econ 101

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 13, Categories: Teaching

I've added a chapter on the environment and energy to my textbook. I'm going to devote a fair bit of space to the economics of global warming and alternative energy,...

Why the Fed Should Consider Cutting Rates Sooner rather than Later

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 12, Categories: The Fed

When faced with a budding financial crisis, the good central banker does a two-step dance. First, he (or she) staunches the bleeding, closing insolvent financial institutions, tightening lending standards, and...

Watch out for falling productivity?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 09, Categories: Macro

I just did a column for BW, where I argued that the continued fall in productivity growth is a bigger danger to the economy than a housing slump. Take a...

Magazine cover curse evaded--so far

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 05, Categories: Financial markets

About four weeks ago I (together with my co-author David Henry) wrote a cover story for BusinessWeek entitled "It's a Low, Low, Low-Rate World: Why money may stay cheap longer...