Outside the Beltway

While the displacement of poor blacks from their neighborhoods by affluent whites may be lamentable, it’s better than the alternatives.

Banks are faced with a huge number of foreclosures and that resources they’ve allocated towards handling them was woefully inadequate.

Greg Mankiw notes a curious revisionism in Barney Frank’s pronouncements on Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.

Western athletes who’ve complained about the conditions at the Commonwealth Games are coming in for a firestorm of criticism.

Apparently, riding in a gilded carriage with footmen does not preclude one from seeking welfare funds in the United Kingdom.

David Brooks blames our economic woes on a change from a culture that valued productive work to one of gentility. And Bill Cosby.

If there’s an area where our attitudes and behaviors have changed more radically in my lifetime than gender equality, I can’t think of it.

After several months of bad housing sales, politicians in Washington are starting to talk about bringing back one of the worst public policy programs of the last two years.

For many reasons, the housing market is unlikely to fully recover for the foreseeable future.

The housing market that existed from the late 1990s until 2007/08 was an historical anomaly, and anyone expecting a return to those days is fooling themselves.

Another set of bad economic numbers are out today, and one wonders when we’ll start getting the good news.

House Minority John Boehner is getting a lot of attention for calling for mass firings at the White House. The real news, though, is that his speech is shifting the focus of the political conversation back to the economy. Which is just what the GOP needs.

Lenders and Borrowers seem poised to make the same mistakes that brought about the last Housing Bubble all over again.

The First Family can go on vacation, but politics never does.

If lawyers and MBAs don’t understand their mortgage documents, what chance do the rest of us have?

The concentration of policy wonks in the Washington-New York-Boston corridor produces skewed analysis.

Megan McArdle cites an academic article someone disagrees with, proving she’s a dishonest hack.

Charles Rangel, who recently stepped aside as Chairman of House Ways And Means Committee, is facing ethics charges.

Most research shows that unemployment benefits/insurance increases the duration of unemployment.

You’ve probably seen a lot of these signs popping up lately.

The President likely has some very bad poll numbers on his mind this morning.

There are further signs that the economy will remain anemic through the end of 2010, if not longer.

Those with million dollar plus mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate on those smaller loans. Are the rich more ruthless?

Age-adjusted unemployment is at its worst in more than a quarter century

There are a whole lot of reasons to be concerned about the economy.

A lot stands in the way of returning to pre-collapse employment levels in the USA.

The real estate market is returning to normal after being artificially stimulated by a tax credit.