Stock returns are lower and volatility is higher when Congress is in session. As a proxy for American economic growth, that's not a good thing with an unbalanced legislature:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=687211
Some funny and interesting proposals for getting monetary policy past the issue of a zero bound:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/03/reloading-weapons-of-monetary-policy.html
On the trivial pursuits of Congress:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/03/trivial-pursuit.html
Jeffrey Sachs explains why the public-private program proposed by Geithner creates substantial moral hazard and pays banks a greater-than-fair value for their assets.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3e99880-1991-11de-9d34-0000779fd2ac.html
On problems with the charity tax (that you can't functionally tax charitable giving and expect the level of charitable giving to remain the same), from Feldstein:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032402462.html
On why it may not be such a good thing for AIG employee retention to force return of the AIG bonuses - A letter from an AIG EVP to the CEO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
I may have commented on this post solely due to the word Mankiw in the subject line.
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