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  • WSJ Documentary on European Economic Crisis

    Europe and the euro start 2012 in the spotlight, as economists around the globe watch to see how policymakers fight what appears to be an oncoming recession. Count the Wall Street Journal 's top editors and reporters among those who see Europe struggling throughout the year. The Journal's multimedia team has put together an impressive--if at times rather gloomy--documentary titled Europe on the Brink . The doc moves from the establishment of the EU and what some WSJ editors see as basic structural flaws to the EU economy, to the beginning of the debt crisis, and through to today's challenges.

  • Paulson: Reforms Needed in China and US to Sustain Global Economic Growth

    Three years removed from his darkest hours as Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson is ruminating on how to fix this country's jobs and growth problems. He discussed the need for new ideas with the Wall Street Journal 's David Wessel this week. At the top of his list: China and the US coming up with new ways to get their economies to work together. Paulson says "fundamental reform" in both countries is necessary or the whole global economy will suffer:

  • Getting to Know the New CEA Chair, Alan Krueger

    Yesterday President Obama named Princeton economist Alan Krueger as the new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers . Krueger is known for his work on unemployment--and he will be expected to lead on the Obama administration's anticipated new jobs plan in his new role. The Wall Street Journal 's David Wessel give a good quick briefing on Krueger: One former CEA chair thinks Krueger is a good hire. Here's Greg Mankiw 's take:

  • David Wessel on the Budget

    Wall Street Journal Economics Editor David Wessel is looking ahead to the White House's release of the annual budget on Monday, and he anticipates some emphasis on building a stronger economy as a means of reducing the deficit. Wessel is not expecting big proposals on dealing with the rising costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, in part because of the fear that any such proposals would be dead on arrival-- "Republicans will shoot them down and they'll be dead." Read Wessel's column here .

  • Wessel on the Bankruptcy Option for State and Local Governments

    No. David Wesse l, economics editor for the Wall Street Journal , is not saying that local and state governments filing for bankruptcy would be a good thing. But when he looks at the alternatives, he has a hard time finding better options:

  • David Wessel on Three Years of Fighting Economic Collapse

    David Wessel outlines what we have learned since the start of economic collapse in August of 2007 in his weekly column (subscription required), and in this short video from the Wall Street Journal . Among other key points, Wessel says that the efforts to avert major economic meltdown will likely end up costing taxpayers less in actual dollars, but that long term political and economic costs will be much greater.

  • Asia's Bold Recovery

    China and Asia are flexing their economic muscles as they rebound from the recession with much more vigor than the US and, especially, Europe. Wall Street Journal Economics Editor David Wessel says we need to recognize that Asia is "aiming to pull itself out of the recession by itself," perhaps diminishing the importance of Western consumers in the process: Read more from Wessel on Asia's recovery here .

  • WSJ Forecasting Survey: 25% of Jobs Lost Are Not Coming Back

    The latest Wall Street Journal's Forecasting Survey is out, and the participating economists largely share the White House's expectations for job growth in 2010. They see a very small drop in unemployment numbers--predicting, on average, the jobless rate to be at 9.4% by the end of the year. They also expect that a lot of the jobs lost during this recession aren't coming back. On average, the economists expect 25% of the jobs lost will need to be made up in new or different sectors. The economists also expect GDP to grow at about 3% for the rest of the year--and don't see the 5.7% growth we saw last quarter continuing into 2010. Here's a look at the GDP trend as they see it (more interactive charts from the Journal are available here ): Economics Editor David Wessel joined the Journal's News Hub team to discuss the jobs data: Read more about the survey here .

  • Bernanke Defends Fed's Record: Wessel Weighs In

    Fed Chair Ben Bernanke took to Capitol Hill yesterday to defend his record as the nation's top central banker. The White House nominated Bernanke for another term, and the Senate banking committee is his first stop in getting confirmation for another term by the Senate. He took a series of shots from Senators across the political spectrum. Jim Bunning (R-KY) told Bernanke "your time as Fed chairman has been a failure." Bernanke defended his record, and told the committee that the Fed's actions helped the nation avoid a much larger economic catastrophe: We played a central role in efforts to quell the financial turmoil, for example, through our joint efforts with other agencies and foreign authorities to avert a collapse of the global banking system last fall; by ensuring financial institutions adequate access to short-term funding when private funding sources dried up; and through our leadership of the comprehensive assessment of large U.S. banks conducted this past spring, an exercise that significantly increased public confidence in the banking system. We also created targeted lending programs that have helped to restart the flow of credit in a number of critical markets, including the commercial paper market and the market for securities backed by loans to households and small businesses. Indeed, we estimate that one of the targeted programs--the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility--has thus far helped finance 3.3 million loans to households (excluding credit card accounts), more than 100 million credit card accounts, 480,000 loans to small businesses, and 100,000 loans to larger businesses. And our purchases of longer-term securities have provided support to private credit markets and helped to reduce longer-term interest rates, such as mortgage rates. Taken together, the Federal Reserve’s actions have contributed substantially to the significant improvement in financial conditions and to what now appear to be the beginnings of a turnaround in both the U.S. and foreign economies. David Wessel , economics editor for the Wall Street Journal, has spent the last few years studying the Fed closely for his book, In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic. In a recent interview with Big Think , he spoke about how the Fed's response to the global economic crisis has largely worked, but still contains some risk and uncertainty: You can watch the full interview with Wessel here . And you can watch yesterday's Senate hearings here .

  • NYT Reviews Wessel's 'In Fed We Trust'

    Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel 's work has been required reading/listening/viewing for anyone tracking the downs, and downs, and ups, and downs, and downs (you get the point) of the economy over the last year. Now he has a new book out: In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic , Michiko Kakutani reviews the book in the New York Times , and calls it "essential, lucid — and, it turns out, riveting — reading." [Wessel's] overall assessment: “Every time officials at the Treasury or the Fed thought they finally had gotten ahead of the Great Panic, they turned out to be insufficiently pessimistic. This would be a distinguishing characteristic of this chapter in American economic history: even when officials thought they were planning for the worst-case scenario, they weren’t.” Three policy makers in particular receive low scores from Mr. Wessel. He argues that Mr. Paulson’s abrupt changes of course and failure to understand “the theater” of crisis management hurt his credibility and undermined public confidence. He says that President George W. Bush was “largely a spectator” to “the biggest threat to American prosperity in a generation” possibly because he knew how unpopular he was and figured “he would make Paulson’s job tougher if he appeared to be calling the shots” or because the Bush White House, “stumbling through its last few months, was simply exhausted and understaffed.” And he takes the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to task for allowing economic conditions to develop that fueled the credit crisis in the first place. Read the full review here . And read an excerpt of In Fed We Trust here .

  • Grading Bernanke

    Ben Bernanke has half a year left on his term as chair of the Federal Reserve , and at this point it is not certain whether he will be asked to serve another. Bernanke has said that he expects the economy to pick up later this year , and perhaps his future as chair depends on whether he is right or not. David Wessel , economics editor of the Wall Street Journal , assesses Bernanke's tenure in this short video, and says Bernanke "did a great job in saving us from something that could have been a catastrophe."

  • David Wessel: Recovery Depends on Housing Market Rebound

    David Wessel , economics editor of the Wall Street Journal , says you can forget recovery until the housing market stabilizes: The foreclosure rate is a driving factor for the weak housing market. And while this was once a problem for subprime borrowers, more and more "prime borrowers" are losing their homes. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports:

  • The Rise of Discouraged Workers

    Weekly numbers from the Department of Labor show unemployment close to nine percent. The Wall Street Journal 's David Wessel looks at the numbers and pulls out a key stat: 3.7 million Americans (more than 25 percent of the total unemployed) have been out of work for more than six months. He says the challenge now is "to keep those people from dropping out of the work force alltogether": The Bureau of Labor Statistics calls people who are available to work and have looked for work in the last 12 months, but not in the last four weeks, "marginally attached to the labor force." They don't show up in the unemployment statistics. "Discouraged workers" are a a subset of "marginally attached workers." "Discouraged workers" are people who haven't looked for work because they believe there are no jobs available. This is the category Wessel says we need to keep from growing. So far, not so good. The number of "discoiraged workers" rose 70 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The number is now at 717,000. The overall number of "marginally attached" workers reached 2.1 million at the end of the first quarter. Read the Bureau of Labor Statistics paper, Ranks of Discouraged Workers and Others Marginally Attached to the Labor Force Rise During Recession .

  • WSJ's Wessel Lays Out Possible Scenarios for Global Economy

    Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel says there "isn't any doubt where the global economy is now," after yesterday's report from the IMF that we're in the midst of the worst global recession since the Great Depression. And just as the US dragged the world down into this recession, so too with the US be the driving force for recovery. In this short video, Wessel lays out three possible scenarios for where the economy is going (spoiler alert: "quick recovery" is not one of the scenarios):