The New Republic

Noam's been recently floating the wacky idea that the coming employment recovery could be here much sooner than the last two jobless recoveries have led most of us to expect. I was skeptical about his argument, but here's some more evidence that maybe we shouldn't expect a worst-case scenario for job growth. Riccardo DiCecio and Charles Gascon of the St.

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New Fed rules severely restrict banks' ability to charge overdraft fees. Dollar carry trade not as big as some fear. Stop the madness: The Fed needs to be independent. Geithner: U.S. borrowing far less than expected to fix financial system. Should Apple be charging more than 99 cents for songs on Itunes?

Is monetary policy still too tight? NYT looks at Bernanke's battles with legislators. Were oil prices a bigger part of the recession than given credit for? $4.2 trillion in maturing debt could prolong the credit crunch. How statistical time machines can compare SCOTUS justices across decades.

Ex-Bear Stearns fund managers acquitted of subprime-related fraud charges. Why big news on diminishing oil supplies didn't move markets. Under Dodd's plan, commercial banks would lose ability to name Fed directors. Mark Thoma has a new blog. Treasury a little too selective in releasing loan modification stats.

Fred Mishkin: Fed shouldn't worry about asset bubbles right now. Inflation expectations have returned to a historically normal range. Study: A higher minimum wage can reduce obesity. Dallas Fed: Don't blame protectionism for the decline in global trade. Banks just as happy buying Treasuries as making loans.

Here's some more evidence against the declining lending standards theory of the crisis -- and support for the claim that it was the design itself, or existence, of subprime mortgages that played a seminal role in our housing woes. In a new working paper, Dean Corbae and Erwan Quintin investigate the impact of the financial innovation that was the subprime mortgage.

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John Reed apologizes for creating Citigroup. What Europe is getting right in tackling unemployment. Public works projects successful in rural India? Study: Pork-barrel spending a symptom, not cause, of budget woes. Did Malcolm Gladwell cause Lehman's collapse?

Paul Krugman wants lawmakers to create a modern version of the Works Progress Administration, an important New Deal-era agency which put millions of people to work on public infrastructure projects: A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question. ... You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work.

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Arnold's hidden F-You message unlikely to have happened by chance. Union roll declines are not just a U.S. phenomenon. Should NYT dump its sports section? The legal market in human cadavers. Treasury's treating bloggers like journalists.

Eugene Fama calls the premise of Justin Fox's book "fantasy". Why did Volcker walk out of his Bartiromo interview? Dirk Bezemer: Why financial sector debt is a dead-end for the economy. Treasury to issue 30-year inflation protected bonds. Felix Salmon can't see a painless way out of the bubble we're inflating. The Great Crash ... in nominal spending.