Sounds like a good idea to me: H/T: Marginal Revolution

The Postal Service announced another round of service cutbacks today that are likely to just make the rapidity of its decline increase

Reacting to Monday’s news that The Ohio State University had hired former Florida Gators coach Urban Meyer to be the new Buckeye’s Head Coach and given him a 6-year contract worth $26,000,000 not including benefits and bonuses, Bill Press is rather obviously upset: I’m sorry, but no football coach, no matter how successful, is worth [...]

Some good news in the November jobs report, but not very much of it.

Guess who got advance warning of government actions on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis?

One of the three major credit rating agencies has put the United States on negative credit watch: Following the failure of the supercommittee, the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating was placed on a “negative outlook” Monday by Fitch Ratings, indicating a more than 50 percent chance the country gets slapped with another downgrade in the [...]

That’s what Wolfgang Münchau at The Financial Times says: Technically, one can solve the problem even now, but the options are becoming more limited. The eurozone needs to take three decisions very shortly, with very little potential for the usual fudges. First, the European Central Bank must agree a backstop of some kind, either an [...]

You’d think that in today’s world employers wouldn’t have trouble finding qualified employees. You’d be wrong.

Can we credibly blame the CRA, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, and the like for the mortgage crisis?

Life, it turns out, isn’t fair.

Despite our rather obvious problems, we’re in great shape compared to the rest of the developed world and, especially, to even our fairly recent ancestors.

“The debt crisis is burrowing ever deeper, like a worm, and is now reaching Germany.”

Stuart Staniford passes along this chart of industrial output in the Eurozone, and the broader EU as a whole: Eurostat just released figures for industrial new orders for September.  The summary graph is above both for the Eurozone specifically (pink) and the whole EU (black). In September 2011 compared with August 2011, the euro area [...]

James Pethokoukis breaks news that Jon Huntsman is trying to differentiate himself from the pack with a bold new proposal on financial reform. He quotes extensively from a proposal not yet on the Huntsman website that declares: We need banks that are small and simple enough to fail, not financial public utilities. Hedge funds and [...]

It’s beginning to look like the situation at MF Global is twice as bad as first thought: The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday. But the surprise finding, [...]

Remember that anemic but better than nothing GDP growth rate of 2.5% in the Third Quarter? Yea, well, that’s gone now, and the future’s not looking all that bright all of a sudden: The United States economy grew at a slightly slower pace than previously estimated in the third quarter, but weak inventory accumulation amid [...]

YouGov’s Brand Index finds that Herman Cain’s candidacy has had an impact on how people of different political stripes view Godfather’s Pizza: Although Cain has not been the CEO for Godfather’s Pizza for 15 years, his prominent association to the brand, which has been replayed in the media since he began his campaign for the [...]

Nate Silver has an excellent post up this afternoon about the relationship between economic indicators and the outcome of Presidential elections that’s definitely worth a look. In short, Silver takes 43 separate economic statistics and the results of every Presidential election since 1948 and, well, it turns out that unemployment rates don’t correlate with election [...]

Andrew Sullivan passes on a link that notes the possibility of another commodity shortage that may soon hit the world: At the exact moment that rare beans are becoming all the rage, all beans are becoming rarer. The price of a cup of coffee—whether it be a $6 pour-over, a $2.50 dark roast at Starbucks, [...]

Will we wind up with a backdoor mandate? Or a single payer system?

Chelsea Clinton’s hiring as an NBC personality is another hit for the meritocracy myth.

Not so good economic news from the Federal Reserve: The European debt crisis is raising the odds of a U.S. recession, with economic contraction more likely than not by early 2012, according to research from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. While it is difficult to gauge the odds precisely, an analysis of leading U.S. [...]

When it comes to the issue likely to be at the forefront of voters minds next November, President Obama isn’t doing well at all: President Obama’s ratings on the the most important issue for his re-election — the economy — have posted the weakest showing of his presidency, according to a poll released Friday by [...]

Some of America’s largest and well-known businesses have gotten together and filed an amicus curaie brief in a pending lawsuit seeking to have the Defense Of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional: Microsoft and Starbucks are among 70 corporations, financial institutions, medical centers, and other major organizations that have signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in support [...]

Congressmen apparently regularly make investment moves based on the information they learn. Of course, for them it isn’t illegal.

Last night, most of the leading Republican candidates for President acted as if Europe was on another planet.

My latest for the New Atlanticist, “Italy Too Big To Fail, Too Big to Save,” explores the fact that overnight, Italy has replaced Greece as the poster child for the Eurozone crisis. I’ve for some time been bemused that journalists and other informed observers are shocked as each new European country follows Greece in crisis. [...]

It was clear from the start that “Cash For Clunkers” was a bad idea.

Apparently, the Federal Government believes it necessary to remind you that you can buy Christmas Trees.

A dwindling proportion of students are majoring in STEM fields. They’re likely making the wise choice.

The popular program was even less successful than we initially thought.

With the final resolution of Greece’s problems still up in the air and by no means settled, Europeans are already dealing with a new crisis in Italy:  ROME — Italy’s financial crisis deepened on Wednesday despite a pledge by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign once Parliament passes austerity measures demanded by the European Union. [...]

If you thought Niall Ferguson was an insufferable git in print, just wait

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge points out a story that the mainstream press isn’t noticing yet. The Greeks are, perhaps not surprisingly, pulling their money out of Greek banks: According to just released data by the Bank of Greece, the September collapse in gross deposits from €188.7 billion €183.2 billion was the largest ever, and [...]

Barry Ritholtz lists a dozen causes of the financial crisis.

Federal government workers make less than their private sector counterparts, a new study compiled by federal workers reveals.

When the CFTC wanted to change a rule, Jon Corzine used his influence to stop them.

Another month, another jobs report that makes you go “meh.”

Did Congress cause the mortgage crisis by mandating loans to poor people? No.

The Greek referendum could be a disaster for the global economy. And might be the right thing to do.

The investment firm headed by former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has apparently admitted that it illegally diverted customer funds as its financial position was collapsing: MF Global Holdings Ltd. acknowledged to federal regulators that money had been diverted out of customer accounts in violation of futures rules and law, according to a federal official. [...]

Two years ago, South Carolina Boeing workers voted 199-68 to decertify their union. The NLRB has filed suit against the company for choosing to locate a new plant there instead of Washington state. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi thinks it’s just fine if those jobs go the way of the dodo if they’re not [...]

Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine can’t be having a good week. First, the brokerage firm he heads files for bankruptcy protection after making a really bad bet on the Euro. Now, there’s nearly a billion dollars in customer funds missing: Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has [...]

It’s the 5% versus the 1% moreso than the 99% against the 1%.

The Eurozone deal reached over the weekend, already in doubt for the reasons that James Joyner noted on Sunday, fell into further doubt today when the Greek Prime Minister decided to schedule a referendum to get the approval of the Greek people for the austerity deal that Europe is seeking to impose on them: ATHENS [...]

Why does wine get so much more written treatment than beer?

Social Security outlays are exceeding its income. Is that really a problem?

Increasing taxes on the rich may be a fiscal policy worth talking about, but it won’t make the poor richer.

European leaders continue to kick the can down the road on a crisis that could bring down the global economy.

Compared to what we saw during the first half of the year, it looks like the economy showed some signs of life in the just-concluded 3rd Quarter: Economic growth in the United States picked up modestly in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday, and economists generally expect that it will continue at nearly [...]