Hot times in Silicon Valley
The San Francisco Bay area is undergoing one of its periodic tech booms on the back of the flourishing of social networking firms. That boom, the Wall Street Journal tells us, is very good for local tech workers: Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California’s Silicon […]
Getting up to Speed on the Financial Crisis: A One-Weekend-Reader’s Guide
Gorton, Gary, Metrick, Andrew. All economists should be conversant with “what happened?” during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We select and summarize 16 documents, including academic papers and reports from regulatory and international agencies. This reading list covers the key facts and mechanisms in the build-up of risk, the panics in short-term-debt markets, the policy reactions, […]
Driving the Global Economy with the Brakes On
Blanchard, Olivier. After the speech by the IMF’s Managing Director in Berlin yesterday, my main messages on the global outlook will not surprise you. Starting with the bad news–the world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of stalling. The epicenter of the danger is Europe, but the rest of the […]