Time for another go-round — our third — with The Brian Lehrer Show’s Uncommon Economic Indicators web page, where people submit signs of the recession observed around the New York City area. These won’t show up in any government statistics or charts, but they turn the abstract gloom of macroeconomic numbers into a concrete picture [...]

Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (that’s SIGTARP to you) has released his Quarterly Report to Congress, which you can read here in .pdf. The opening section of the Executive Summary is below. My own executive summary:

• The financial system is far more stable in parts than at the height of the crisis in fall, 2008. Banks can raise funds and many formerly on the verge of collapse have repaid the emergency government loans early. These repayments have resulted in a profit for the U.S. Treasury on some of the TARP investments, decreasing the cost of the bailout to taxpayers.
• The TARP goal of increasing financing to U.S. businesses and consumers has not been met, as lending continues to decrease and home foreclosures remain at record levels. The repayment of government funds by banks and the exit of the U.S. as a major shareholder in the banks have signficantly decreased the government’s ability to influence the policies of these financial institutions.
• Fundamental problems in the financial system have not been addressed to date, and “too big to fail” institutions are even larger, thanks in part to TARP and other bailout programs. Incentives to take reckless risk are even greater, as the market is convinced government will step in to cover losses that could threaten the system. Executive compensation also remains an incentive to take inordinate risks.
• The government’s efforts to support home prices risk re-inflating a housing bubble.

PBS NewsHour tried something interesting this year for the State of the Union speech: The show opened up its video comments section on its YouTube channel and posted some video reactions from its audience. Some user videos: American Association of University Women policy advisor expresses support for the speech’s focus on jobs, deficit reduction, and [...]

Below is a lecture on the question of institutional corruption given in October by Professor Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard. The center has posted a summary of the lecture; an extract from the summary, on the institutional corruption of the U.S. Congress, is below the video. [...]

In the process of researching yesterday’s post on the lack of Social Security cost of living increasing, we found Social Security News, maintained by a law firm that deals with Social Security Disability. Anyone interested in the minutiae of the giant bureaucracy that is the Social Security system will find oodles of information here, such [...]

For senior citizens, it’s going to be an UnCOLA year. From CNNMoney: There will be no cost-of-living increase (COLA) for 57 million Social Security beneficiaries next year because consumer prices have fallen, the Social Security Administration announced on Thursday. It marks the first time that Social Security benefits have not been increased year over year [...]