A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
- Grading the First Year: Berkeley professor Brad DeLong reviews the Obama economic policy team and gives this grade: exceeds expectations (or a solid B+/A-). DeLong, who served in the Clinton Treasury Department, also highlights (and critiques) a column by Bloomberg’s Al Hunt that says the Obama economic team features poor coordination, faulty communication and an inability to convey an overarching policy.
- Lobbying and Bailouts: At the Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz looks at a paper by International Monetary Fund economists on lobbying and the financial crisis, calling it “yet another indictment of the nexus between Wall Street and Washington.” He writes: “We know from previous reports that the lobbying of the most aggressive, freest spending banks led to the greatest return in bailout monies. The IMF shows that it also led to riskier lending with less supervision and regulation.”
- Forces of Joblessness: At Econbrowser, Menzie Chinn looks at structural unemployment in the latest downturn. “Secular structural unemployment is likely to have risen. But it is not clear to me that an increase in structural unemployment constitutes the largest portion of the increase in unemployment.”