Econstory

Here you’ll find information regarding the Economystory.org project itself, or any information that doesn’t fit within one of out Partner Projects.

Bookkeeping

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: March 11, 2010
McCracken County, Ky. librarians. Credit: Flickr/Circulating

McCracken County, Ky. librarians. Credit: Flickr/Circulating

NewsHour’s Patchwork Nation reported earlier this year on Laredo, Texas’s lone bookstore shutting down. Libraries are now also feeling the pinch of recent municipal cutbacks around the country.

In Florida, state funding for libraries was just cut entirely, and in other states, like California, fines are increasing and opening hours are shortening.

Libraries closing mean less Internet access for people without broadband at home, and fewer activities like readings and children’s classes.

The West Palm Beach Post reported:

Without state aid, Murray says the West Palm Beach library will have budgetary issues. It will hurt them the most with affording software that automates the library. Also, they would have to eliminate the AmeriCorps program, which provides volunteers for the library that goes to schools and works in minority communities, etc.

And while schools and libraries are facing cutbacks, publishers may be getting a boost from new standards in public schools.

Marketplace’s Amy Scott reports:

Jay Diskey is executive director of the Association of American Publishers’ School Division. He says after a big push to rewrite curricula in the 1990s, some publishers saw double-digit sales increases. Standardization could also save publishers money. Diskey says having to customize materials to meet a patchwork of state standards has driven up costs.

There’s certainly no shortage of books about the economy. Paul Solmon took a poll of economists to find out what’s on their bedside tables.

Yale University professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller recommends Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages and Well-Being, by George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton and Economics of Integrity: From Dairy Farmers to Toyota, How Wealth Is Built on Trust and What That Means for Our Future, by Anna Bernasek.

There is some overlap between the books, but each offers what seems to me to be a very important perspective for our times, that may resonate especially well in this financial crisis.

Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, is a fan of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael Gazzaniga.

By looking at economics as a branch of evolutionary biology and ecology, we can see new patterns and processes that explain much of the recent financial crisis, and the years of prosperity that led up to the crash.

Also posted in NewsHour: Economic Patchwork Map, PBS: Video | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What’s Greek to us

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: March 9, 2010

Greece is in major debt and the ancient country is facing some very modern problems trying to get out. As a newer member of the eurozone, the European countries who have adopted the euro as their one currency, more financially stable nations like Germany and France are nervous about the implications coming to Greece’s aid.

NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff spoke with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou about what his country needs from the U.S. and how Greece got into its current financial situation.

Marketplace commentator David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute falls on the side of questioning the expansion of the eurozone. He notes that the weaker countries in the eurozone are making sacrifices to stay in the club, and this approach will not help them succeed in the long run.

These governments — and others in Europe — are accepting higher unemployment in order to defend their currency…And yet, while Spain’s socialist government has seen its poll numbers drop, neither Spain, nor Greece, nor Portugal, nor Ireland is experiencing serious public pressure to quit the euro.To the leaders of these countries, the euro means Europe, and Europe means prosperity, stability, democracy, and peace.

How will the Greek crisis affect your investments here in the U.S.? Nightly Business Report spoke with foreign exchange experts on why investors here should care.

Standard & Poors analyst Alec Young:
Europe and the UK represent about two thirds of overseas market capitalizations. So anybody that owns an international mutual fund or an international ETF, there’s a very good chance, if it’s broadly diversified, that they do have significant exposure to Europe and to the UK.

Some experts say that while Greece is having trouble and there is a threat to other struggling eurozone nations, the fears about the global economy’s stability as a whole are secondary.

NPR’s Corey Flintoff spoke with economist Joseph Stiglitz:

The Greek crisis has contributed to the general air of uncertainty in international financial markets… Greece is one of five euro zone countries now struggling with big national debts. “The major implications are for Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland and therefore in some sense for all of Europe,” says Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University.
The problems in the euro zone could impact the U.S., too, Stiglitz says, especially if they dampen sales of U.S. exports to Europe.

Also posted in Marketplace: Multimedia Series, NBR, NPR: Aggregated Local News Feed, NPR: Local/National Collaboration, NewsHour: Economic Patchwork Map, PBS: Video | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who are you calling Shorty?

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: March 5, 2010

It’s Oscar weekend, but in the world of social media, a set of honors for a more prolific crowd went out this week – the Shorty Awards, which praise the best Twitterers on the planet. Some of the most impressive are from the world of finance, who’ve had some success in explaining the economic crisis in 140 characters or less.

The top six finance Twitterers include personal finance guru Suze Orman (@SuzeOrmanShow), debt help radio program The Dave Ramsey Show (@RamseyShow), finance blog site Mint.com (@mint), UK markets strategist Ashraf Laidi (@alaidi), LendingClub founder Rob Garcia (@robgarciasj), and finance site Bulls on Wall Street (@BullsOnWallSt).

How much of a difference can you make in 140 characters? The David Ramsey Show, which claimed second place in the awards reports on how listeners can learn to be debt-free and shares their stories on Twitter:

Blake: Total debt paid off by just those who got thru on the phones today on #TDRS = $876,000. Year to Date = $9,149,900

The popular personal finance blog Mint shares links to content on their main site over Twitter, like the pros and cons of offshore banking and the urban legends surrounding credit scores. But Mint also provides real-time news and advice solely on Twitter, like today’s project where they are retweeting savings tips from readers:

RT @ekmurphy: automatic savings plan helps build savings every time I get paid, not just at the end of the month when I look at what’s left

Outside of finance, but still in the realm of news in the public interest, The Diane Rehm Show @DRShow and Matt Laslo @MattLaslo of Capitol News Connection were both finalists in the news category. Washington, D.C. radio legend Diane Rehm shares inside views of her guests, like health care expert and NIH director Francis Collins, and asks listeners to answer questions on relevant news topics.

Matt Laslo at Capitol News Connection gives real-time updates from his reporting escapades on Capitol Hill. A recent adventure found him hearing about Texas Independence Day:

Did you know it’s Texas Independence Day? Me neither, until Cornyn (R-TX) started talking about it on the Senate floor.

Who are your favorite economics and news experts on Twitter? My favorites are listed here, on the @economystory bloggers list.

Also posted in CNC: Ask Your Lawmaker, NPR: Local/National Collaboration, PRX: Public Radio Archive | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Day of action for education

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: March 4, 2010

Students and education advocates in California took to the streets today to protest budget cuts to public school programs. Youth Radio’s correspondents were following the story and collecting perspectives.

Asked what she thinks California will look like in ten years given what’s happening in public education today, 21-one-year-old Taylor Kohles said, “We need to change our priorities and fully fund education. If that doesn’t happen, it will create an education gap.”

Twenty-year-old UC Berkeley student Eddie Rivero said he has friends who will have to drop out of school because they’re undocumented immigrants who can’t get financial aid and are paying part of their tuition with scholarships. He said they won’t be able to cover costs as tuition rises.

For more on the protests, check out Youth Radio’s Twitter list of Day of Action participants.

Also posted in Youth Radio: Youth Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paying for disaster

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: March 3, 2010
Relief workers in Concepcion, Chile. Credit: Flickr/Globovision

Relief workers in Concepcion, Chile. Credit: Flickr/Globovision

Chile and Haiti suffered similar massive earthquakes, but the aftermath and impact of the disasters couldn’t be more different.

Chile’s much more economically developed than Haiti and has made huge progress over the past 20 years, which partially contributed to limiting the country’s death toll after the earthquake. So recovery, as Marketplace’s Tess Vigeland reports, will be focused (after human relief) on not losing the economic gains in areas like natural resource developments and infrastructure improvements. She spoke with Kevin Casas-Zamora, of the Brookings Institution:

Vigeland: You mentioned that there’s been a lot of economic growth in Chile. How much of that do you know went into infrastructure that perhaps contributed to the death toll not being greater?

Casas-Zamora: I think why the death toll was as low as it has been given the magnitude of the tragedy, it ultimately has to do with development in general. The glaring comparison between Chile and Haiti showcases very well why development matters. And it matters because it saves hundreds of thousands of lives.

Vigeland: What do you think the rest of the world, other governments, are taking away from how Chile has handled this crisis thus far?

Casas-Zamora: My sense is that the most remarkable aspect of all this is that it comes in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti. And the contrast couldn’t be greater. Really, in Chile what we’re witnessing is a state that works, whereas in Haiti the most glaring absence in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake was of a state at all. I mean it was sort of a phantom state. Whereas in the case of Chile, you can definitely see what a difference a functioning state makes when a disaster such as this one strikes.

The effect of the earthquake on Chile’s natural resources business is a major concern. Nightly Business Report’s Terri Cullen reports:

The location of the disaster can inflate commodities prices as well. For example, Chile is the world’s largest copper producer. The quake briefly sent the price of copper soaring to a seven-week high, before settling back on word the country’s biggest mines are undamaged. Oil prices also rose after Chile’s government said the quake disrupted oil production in the country, so it would need to import more fuel.

The threat of escalating inflation and the loss of human productivity will no doubt hamper economic growth in Chile and Haiti in the months, and perhaps years, to come. But the rebuilding and recovery effort could potentially wind up helping the economy in the long run.

Haiti’s economic status isn’t the only reason the quake there was so much more devastating than Chile’s. Other factors, including a direct hit to the capital city, and that Haiti hasn’t been an earthquake-prone area, also contributed to a greater impact in the Caribbean nation.

But it’s not a contest. Both countries have much rebuilding to do and “donor fatigue” is a real issue. The Christian Science Monitor compares the giving to both countries so far. After the 2004 Asian tsunami, NPR published this guide to giving wisely and advice how citizens can assist both ongoing causes and the cause-du-jour.

Also posted in Marketplace: Multimedia Series, NBR | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment