What Am I Reading?

The effervescent Wolfgang Munchau emphasizes, as so many millions have again and again and again. That the 'solutions' are proving to be worse than the problems. He has a bit for a third of the troika too, 
"One wonders sometimes whether this is the same IMF that in its latest World Economic Outlook produced a very thoughtful analysis of past debt crises. It came to the conclusion that deficit reduction programmes can function only under certain auspicious conditions and must not be pursued in a blind, mechanistic sort of way."


Interested in how the US Senate and Congress handles their wealth? Are they suffering? Nope. Here's the WP with  Capitol Assets.

James Surowiecki has a short piece in the New Yorker on the looming fiscal cliff that ends with this gem of a line, 

"The fact that Congress was foolish enough to create the fiscal cliff doesn’t mean it also has to be foolish enough to drive us off it."

The narrative Robert Shiller has a piece in the NYT on the double-edged nature of the housing fever - the booms and the busts, and the seemingly extravagant expectations people had of the market.

Keeping in line with a favourite Republican nominee pastime of euro-bashing, here's a piece focusing on Romney playing to his base by attempting to distinguish America from...well....the rest of them (in this case, Spain). Funny thing is anyone can tell you that Europe did not spend its way into this crisis - that's not the cause. But obviously Romney knows that. Which means - that this is yet another case of intentional dishonesty. 

And finally, here's Mankiw's thoughts on the whole BLS 'truther' controversy (controversy?? really?). And Krugman's blurb on constant-demography based unemployment data. What it's all trying to come down to is of course, is this a real recovery or not. Election year you see...

And finally finally, Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier came out with a paper on different forms of capitalism. This, from the abstract - "some countries will opt for a type of cut-throat capitalism that generates greater inequality and more innovation and will become the technology leaders, while others will free-ride on the cut throat incentives of the leaders and choose a more cuddly form of capitalism. Paradoxically, those with cuddly reward structures, though poorer, may have higher welfare than cut-throat capitalists but in the world equilibrium, it is not a best response for the cut-throat capitalists to switch to a more cuddly form of capitalism."

I'm going to read it and get back on this.