"After the Crisis" Seminar Resource Guide

The worst recession since the Great Depression has left a deep mark on the economy and upended the fiscal policy debate. We are headed for an era of more government regulation of the economy and transformed behavior of investors, businesses and citizens.

The Economist's U.S. economics editor Greg Ip provides resources for five pivotal economic topics.

Financial Reform Regulation

A good backgrounder: The “Blueprint” on financial reform released by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in March 2008. Though Paulson’s goal of making financial firms more competitive became obsolete as the crisis hit, the blueprint nonetheless provides good background on why our financial system evolved as it did. Paulson's successor, Tim Geithner, put forth a blueprint of his own. And Dan Tarullo, a Federal Reserve governor and leading authority on banking, provides a nice overview of the development of our banking system.

Treasury maintains a Web site of regulatory reform news updates. Blank Rome, a Washington lobbying firm, provides continuous commentary on regulatory developments at FinancialReformWatch.com, but keep in mind that it could reflect the interests of their clients. The Center for Responsible Lending, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, has written and testified at length on regulatory reform, with a focus on how it affects consumers.

Douglas Elliott of the Brookings Institution provides a more centrist view on regulatory reform in several articles and papers, including this review of the Obama administration's financial reform proposals.

The Cleveland Fed has put together an excellent video -- featuring "really bad drawings" -- that explains why some financial institutions are too big and interconnected to fail.

Fiscal stimulus and government debt

The two big events in fiscal policy this year were President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- and his budget.

The Congressional Budget Office provides dispassionate analysis of both. In January, director Doug Elmendorf discussed the pros and cons of varying forms of fiscal stimulus (pages 17-28). The CBO also reviewed the economic impact of the stimulus package and analyzed Obama’s budget. Elmendorf also writes a blog.

The official White House view on the stimulus package is on the Web site of the Office of Management and Budget. Budget director Peter Orszag’s blog gets to the meat of the issues quickly, from the administration’s point of view. Recovery.gov is the administration’s official web site. It dispenses state-by-state information on the stimulus package, but ProPublica provides more comprehensive information.

Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains the economic thrust of Obama’s fiscal policy in “Growth without Bubbles”, “So is it (ARRA) working?” and “The Lessons of 1937,” a guest article in The Economist. Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, does the same in a speech to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The Economist provides a historical overview and contemporary analysis of Americans’ attitudes towards big government. It also describes the global debt mess in an editorial and an article in June.

Balanced, rigorous fiscal policy analysis comes from the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings. William Gale and Alan Auerbach have authored several alarming and authoritative analyses of our fiscal future and the threat of mounting national debt, incorporating developments in Obama’s budget. The Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget is a leading fiscal hawk watchdog group. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is even more vocal on these issues.

Energy and Climate Change

A good place to start is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though much has changed since its last comprehensive assessment in 2007. The CBO produced an updated, U.S.-specific analysis in May 2009, summarized on the director's blog. The McKinsey Global Institute forecast the demand for energy (full report). The Council on Foreign Relations produces articles and reports on energy and climate.

Most current debate centers on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the Waxman-Markey bill). The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has a summary of the bill and the Washington Post provide s a handy Q&A. The Natural Resources Defense Council provides a supportive review, while the Heritage Foundation takes the opposite point of view.

On the impact of green energy technology, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and the Center for American Progress provide an upbeat joint review. The Pew Center for Research on the States presented a more even-handed view. The CBO summarizes two reports on the topic.

The Wall Street Journal Blog Environmental Capital provides ongoing coverage and commentary on environmental business issues. The Economist’s science editor, Geoff Carr, provided a sweeping overview of energy technology developments in a special report.

Personal Finance

A good overview of the financial crisis for investors is The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It, a book edited by Dave Kansas. The Journal also produced a short video version of the book, available for free on its Website.

Though not about the current period, Jonathan Clements’ The Little Book of Main Street Money is an excellent, basic guide to intelligent financial planning. Jason Zweig, Clements' successor as the author of the Journal's personal finance column, maintains a Web site of articles and advice.

The McKinsey Global Institute looked at the future of consumers, debt and thrift in a series of articles, in particular, “Talkin’ ’Bout My Generation: The Economic Impact of Aging U.S. Baby Boomers.” Annamaria Lusardi is one of the leading scholars of economic and financial literacy, and her research and blog explore savings behavior.

Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel of the National Bureau of Economic Research authored a fascinating research paper on the investment behavior of Baby Boomers, “In Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomi c Experiences Affect Risk-Taking?”

The future of the U.S. economy

A good place to start is the International Monetary Fund’s annual review of the United States. It provides a thorough description of how the economy got here, its likely future, and challenges for policymakers to overcome.

Pimco, the bond fund manager, provides a wide range of commentary on the medium-term (five years or so) outlook for the U.S. and global economies. Keep in mind that their commentary may reflect their investment positions.

An article in The Economist suggests that the U.S. economy will have trouble growing briskly in the coming years and difficulty reducing excessive dependence on consumer borrowing.

The accompanying editorial examines how difficult a return to balanced growth will be for the world economy.

Moody’s Economy.com provides continuous economic analysis and timely commentary by chief economist Mark Zandi. The Wall Street Journal blog Real Time Economics provides continuous commentary on economic issues and research. The Journal also takes the pulse every month of the forecasting fraternity in its monthly consensus survey.

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For more resources, see the resource package from our April seminar on the economy.