http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/
S&P downgrades Greece: the full text
27 Feb 2012
| 2 Comments Germany approves Greek bail-out but warns against further help
27 Feb 2012
| 35 Comments4444444444444444444444
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David Underwood
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‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com
"Decades after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, scholars are conceding culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed."
"The tar baby" is a wonderful parable.
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An Absence of Class - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com
"It’s long past time to acknowledge that a party that promotes ignorance and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country."
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The World’s Best Countries for Women
Apture™ by Angelo Juan Ramos"If we want to make progress, we need to measure it as accurately as possible." None of these standards do that.
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Will ‘Underwater’ Homeowners Make Waves?
If homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the value of their homes walk away en masse, there may be safety in numbers, an economist writes.This is a classic "Belling the cat" problem. The leaders take the hit.The back of the pack gets what benefit there is.Why would any with a hope of survival initiate the project?
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Eve
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The Bankruptcy Boys - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com
"Republicans are adamantly opposed to reducing the deficit with tax increases, but they don’t have any other plan, except to regain power."
Paul Krugman Gets it right again.
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Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com
"BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed."
There is no fix as yet. There is a lot of noise. -
Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find New Acceptance
But Mr. Turner, now a consultant in Milwaukee, warns that the aid encourages the poor to work less and therefore remain in need. Perhpas Mr. Turner did not read that 47% are working, according to this article. It is possible to work 40 hours a week and still remain below the poverty line. These people still need to eat. Also, I don't know anyone who is "working less" because of food stamps. It actually has something to do with the lack of jobs...
This Tribal Nation
Digby sends us to Chris Mooney on how conservatives become less willing to look at the facts, more committed to the views of their tribe, as they become better-educated:
For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.
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But it’s not just global warming where the “smart idiot” effect occurs. It also emerges on nonscientific but factually contested issues, like the claim that President Obama is a Muslim. Belief in this falsehood actually increased more among better-educated Republicans from 2009 to 2010 than it did among less-educated Republicans, according to research by George Washington University political scientist John Sides.
What this made me think about was the way Christy Romer ended her excellent speech (pdf) laying out what we know about the effects of fiscal policy.:
The same effect has also been captured in relation to the myth that the healthcare reform bill empowered government “death panels.” According to research by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Republicans who thought they knew more about the Obama healthcare plan were “paradoxically more likely to endorse the misperception than those who did not.”
The one thing that has disillusioned me is the discussion of fiscal policy. Policymakers and far too many economists seem to be arguing from ideology rather than evidence. As I have described this evening, the evidence is stronger than it has ever been that fiscal policy matters—that fiscal stimulus helps the economy add jobs, and that reducing the budget deficit lowers growth at least in the near term. And yet, this evidence does not seem to be getting through to the legislative process.
What Chris Mooney is telling us is that this is a vain hope. Highly educated political conservatives — and this includes conservative economists — are going to be less persuadable by empirical evidence than the man or woman in the street. The more holes you poke in doctrines like expansionary austerity or supply-side economics, the more committed they will get to those doctrines.
That is unacceptable. We are never going to solve our problems if we can’t agree at least on the facts. Evidence-based policymaking is essential if we are ever going to triumph over this recession and deal with our long-run budget problems.
This debate isn’t going to be won by rational argument."
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More than a third of Americans who volunteer say they mainly do so for religious organizations.
Perhpas men do volunteer more hours than women (don't have time to check, so I'll take your word for it at the moment) but Cathy is correct that women spend more time on uinpaid labor than men, typically within the household. A study put out by the University of Michigan found that women still do more than half of the housework and child rearing. Arlie Hochschild discusses womens unpaid contributions in the "The Second SHift." Secondly, I don't think there needs to be a discussion on which type of volunteering/chairity work is more "meaningful."If a cause is important to you, that's what matters.Volunteered time should not interfere with other responsibilities. -
Walk Away From Your Mortgage!
John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their ...
The number of ways to escape a mortgage that is deep underwater is very limited.Refi is out. The security is insufficient for the debt.Short sale is probably out for the same reason.The yield from the sale will not cover the debt.There probably is not a fool who would buy the house for the price it must bring.The occupant can tough it out and make the payments or default and let the lender take the loss.Strategic default looks like a very good idea if there is a place to go.
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