In this post, Charlie Rose interviews Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University, on the economy.

Charlie Rose sits down with Kenneth Rogoff.

Click here or on the image below to view the video. (As there is no direct link to the clip, you need to click on “Archive” on the Charlie Rose site, and then scroll down to the Roggoff video of November 10.)

Source: Charlie Rose, November 10, 2009.

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The Dow’s up, but why are Main Street Americans still reeling from last year’s economic collapse? With Americans still facing rising unemployment, foreclosures, and declining property values, Bill Moyers discusses with renowned economist James Galbraith,  professor of economics at the University of Texas, whether we have averted the crisis and how to get help for the middle class.

Click here for the full transcript.

Source: Bill Moyers, PBS (via YouTube), October 30, 2009.

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The Dow’s up, but why are Main Street Americans still reeling from last year’s economic collapse? With Americans still facing rising unemployment, foreclosures, and declining property values, Bill Moyers discusses with renowned economist James Galbraith,  professor of economics at the University of Texas, whether we have averted the crisis and how to get help for the middle class.

Click here for the full transcript.

Source: Bill Moyers, PBS (via YouTube), October 30, 2009.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click here to subscribe to updates to Investment Postcards from Cape Town by e-mail.

The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering, a conference bringing together global regulators and bankers to discuss and debate new ideas and develop a new set of guidelines moving forward, has just taken place in New York. Michael Panzer, writer of the Financial Armageddon blog and author of “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse”, was in attendance and has kindly shared some of the more interesting quotes on his blog, as reported below.

Secretary Tim Geithner, United States Department of the Treasury:

“Generally, we did not do enough.” (Referring to the failure to address growing concerns over excessive risk-taking in the period leading up to the financial crisis.) [Editor's note: understatement of the year?]

Stephen Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia:

Those who are looking for a “V”-shaped recovery are in for “a rude awakening.”

“The imbalances going into the crisis were large to begin with.

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By David Papell

Today, we're fortunate to have David Papell, Professor of Economics at University of Houston, as a guest contributor.

The Federal Open Market Committee voted last Wednesday to keep the federal funds target rate at a record low of between zero and 0.25 percent. If it was not constrained by the zero lower bound, should the federal funds rate be negative? If the answer is yes, this suggests that the rate should remain at its record low for a considerable period and provides a justification for continued increases in the Fed's balance sheet. If the answer is no, then the Fed may need to raise its interest rate target sooner rather than later.

There has been a lively debate on this topic in the context of the Taylor rule for monetary policy. The debate started with an article in the Financial

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All Men Created Economically Unequal The distribution of income in the U.S. has been growing more and more concentrated with each passing year since the early 1980’s. This is true whether you include capital gains income or leave it out, although the path is much more bumpy if you include capital gains. The following graphs come from Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics at U.C Berkeley (http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2007.xls). He, along with Thomas Piketty, published a most exhaustive study of income inequality in the U.S. in 2003. Saez has now updated his study through 2007. While I am sure that the numbers including capital gains will come down for 2008, I’m not sure if the numbers excluding capital gains will change much for 2008. The data comes from the Statistics of Income division at the Internal Revenue Service. Those statistics are of extremely high quality and final, but ...

The two “Dr Dooms” - Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, and Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University and chairman of RGE Monitor - discuss the outlook for the economy and financial markets.

As always with these two commentators, they provide a stimulating discussion that is well worth watching.

Source: CNBC (via YouTube.com), August 12, 2009.

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy. Please also add the links to any other thought-provoking articles you would like to share to the comments section.

• Nouriel Roubini (Forbes): Are there bright spots amid the global recession?, August 6, 2009. A snapshot of the better economies.

• Gillian Tett (Financial Times): The liquidity pipes remain clogged, August 6, 2009. Banks seem unwilling to use spare liquidity to engage in activity that regulators or shareholders might deem risky.

• Joseph Stiglitz (Project Syndicate): Keep shovelling that stimulus, August 7, 2009. What is needed now is another dose of fiscal stimulus. If that doesn’t happen, we can look forward to an even longer period in which the economy operates below capacity, with high unemployment.

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The future cometh…Cash for bankers! Cash for Detroit’s clunkers! From one scam to the next…But first, let us turn to the latest market update.

The Dow rose again yesterday – up 33 points, to close at 9,320. We set 10,000+ as our objective for this bounce. We’ll stick with it for a while longer.

Make no mistake though. No one knows how long this rally will last – certainly no one here at the Daily Reckoning vacation headquarters. It will continue until it runs out of gas. That could be tomorrow. It could be months from now.

It will run out of gas sooner or later, and probably this fall. A real, durable bull market would require an economic boom – a genuine recovery. We don’t see that happening…

But people must think it is happening…

“There are signs of a recovery in the US… ” was a popular line at

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Ten years ago in his book The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman* warned of the problems that would lead to the current crisis. Last year the professor and trenchant columnist was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. In the interview below with Daniel Huber, Credit Suisse’s Head of Publications, he talks of the reasons for the crisis, the lessons to be learned, and life as a winner of the Nobel Prize.

Daniel Huber: There are very few winners emerging from this crisis, but you seem to be one of them, because foreseeing this crisis a decade ago probably won you the Nobel Prize for Economics. Paul Krugman: Well, I think I’m enough of a humanitarian to wish things hadn’t turned out this way.

Would you consider yourself a pessimist or a realist? In my view, it seems they’re the same thing right now. But over the course of

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