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Article Artículo

Labor Market Policy Research Reports, Feb. 5 – 11, 2011

This is the fourth installment of a new weekly feature at the CEPR blog. Every Friday, we'll post a list of labor market related policy research reports from progressive research centers around the country. This week, reports from Center for American Progress, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic Policy Institute, Institute for Women's Policy Research, National Employment Law Project, and Political Economy Research Institute.

CEPR and Sairah Hussain / February 11, 2011

Article Artículo

Arithmetic and the Fannie/Freddie Fix

Arithmetic is a skill that is in short supply among economists in policymaking positions. The Obama administration is about to come out with its plans for replacing Fannie and Freddie. The word in the media is that the administration will propose a range of options, with one option maintaining a Fannie/Freddie type structure and one option going to a completely private system for the main sector of the housing market. (Presumably the Federal Housing Authority would remain in place even in the private system to provide credit to moderate income households.)

The third option, that apparently many Washington policy wonks are smiling upon, is a hybrid system with private institutions buying mortgages with a government guarantee standing behind them. (Depending on the construction, the government may either guarantee the institution or the mortgage backed security -- more likely it will be the latter.) According to a new paper by Moody's, this sort of hybrid system will reduce the cost of a 30-year mortgage by 90 basis points (9/10ths of a percentage point) compared to a purely privatized system. The Moody's analysis also calculates that it will raise house prices by 8 percent compared to a privatized system.

CEPR / February 10, 2011

Article Artículo

What Wikileaks Teaches Us About Obama and Latin America
President Obama has given little indication of the strategy for his upcoming trip through Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador. Will "the great listener" promote cooperation and understanding, or carry on the Bush administration’s approach of fighting against r

Rebecca Ray / February 09, 2011

Article Artículo

Health and Social Programs

Letter to Senator Richard Shelby on Social Security Comments

The Honorable Richard Shelby
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Shelby:

During a recent breakfast at the Institute for Education, you said that Social Security is actuarially unsound, that the next generation of workers would receive little or nothing from Social Security and that there is no proof that your sons would get much at all. This is badly mistaken. You should know, both for your own personal finances, and more importantly for your actions as Senator, that under any plausible set of circumstances you and your sons can anticipate a substantial Social Security benefit.

You reached the national retirement age for Social Security in 1999. While I don’t know your precise earnings history, your pay as a senator made you eligible for the maximum benefit if it were sustained for 35 years. The Social Security Trustees Report and likely your own personal finances show that a maximum wage earner retiring in 1999 receives an annual benefit of $21,674 in 2010 dollars.

Dean Baker / February 09, 2011

Article Artículo

Milanovic Graph on International Inequality
This graph by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic made the rounds last week. Income ventiles, USA, Brazil, China, and India Source: Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots To construct the figure, Milanovic first took the population of each of th

John Schmitt / February 08, 2011