Dead Filipinos and Housing Bubbles Are Not Good News by Dean Baker
Neil Irwin gave us a list of five economic trends to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Two of the items do not belong there, or at least not without serious qualification.Three good items from Irwin:
2) Fewer layoffs.
4) More job openings.
5) Debt burdens keep on falling. The ratio of Americans' income going to meet debt obligations has plummeted in recent years, as consumers have both reduced debt burdens (by paying them down and in some cases defaulting) and benefited from lower interest rates. The debt service ratio was only 9.89 percent in the second quarter, hovering near an all-time low of 9.84 percent from late 2012 (the data go back to 1980). That ratio was 13.5 percent in the third quarter of 2007, before the crisis. Congratulations, America! You're making progress in getting your household debts to a more manageable level.
And all five trends are a reminder that, even, as dark as the economy has looked in recent years, there are still some happier things going on that are worth toasting.
John Cassidy Explains That Those Parts of ObamaCare That Are “Liberal” Are Working Very Well by DeLong
And what about the liberals—the ones who pushed the White House to pursue something more radical than a souped-up version of Romneycare? Even if the A.C.A. were to collapse before it got going—and as I’ve said several times, I don’t expect this will happen—they wouldn’t be routed; they would be vindicated. Far from slinking away and conceding that their grand plans had failed, they would once again take up the campaign, which has been active in various forms since the nineteen-sixties, for the public option, and perhaps even a single-payer system…
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