- Upper-Income Spending Reverts to New Normal – Gallup (This data is at odds with trickle down: Upper income spending "down 14% in November, while middle- and lower-income spending was up 7%")
- How To Kill OTC Derivatives Reform in Two Sentences – Baseline Scenario
- Parsons says Citi can repay TARP – Rolfe Winkler
- American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent – WSJ.com
- FT.com – France to impose tax on bank bonuses
- The Mess That Greenspan Made: On equity "cushions" and negative equity
- The Cunning Realist: Rewarding Failure
- Mike Whitney: Obama’s "We Got No Money" Rap (Hat tip Lavrenti)
- China Squeezes Property Speculators With Tougher Tax Penalty – Bloomberg.com
- BBC News – South Korea in $10bn Ghana homes deal
- Economist’s View: "On the Consequences of Nominal Wage Flexibility" (Becker’s view depends on an erroneous neoclassical assumption that economies are self- equilibrating. They are not.)
- EconomPic: The Real Lost Decade: Japanese GDP Edition
- FT.com – BTA agrees $7.7bn debt and interest write-off
Distraction of the Day: Stephen Colbert – Fed’s Dead
(video embedded above)