Matthew O'Brien is an associate editor at The Atlantic covering business and economics. He has previously written for The New Republic.
It's a striking stat. But it doesn't tell us that college is losing its value. It tells us that more people are going to college -- and not enough are finishing. More »
Here's the worst news out of the euro zone in at least a day. For the first time, Germany can now borrow for free for two years at a time.The chart below shows the yield on Germany's two-year bonds. It's admittedly hard to make out because the numbers are so small, but here's the story. After peaking at around 1.7 percent last summer, Germany's two-year borrowing costs have now dropped to around 0.06 percent. And they're set to go all the way down to zero soon.… More »
After powering the world economy since 2008, developing markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China might be teetering. More »
Believe it or not, other stocks besides Facebook traded on Friday. Although Zynga probably wishes it wasn't one of them.While Facebook's much-ballyhooed IPO didn't pop, Zynga's stock went cliff-diving. The Mafia Wars maker saw its stock crash 13 percent, before they suspended trading. It recovered to "only" down 5.5 percent or so, before they suspended trading again. Then things got bad again. It finished over 13 percent down on the day. The below chart puts this… More »
A generation is a terrible thing to lose More »
There is a cry going up across the Old Continent: "Collateral! Collateral! The euro for some collateral!" More »
There's a long list of things that could save the euro zone, and almost all of them involve the ECB being much, much more aggressive More »
Before the Greeks say goodbye to the great European experiment, both Athens and the EU need to gird themselves for the mother of all economic fall-outs. More »
The super-rich have left everyone else behind the past 30 years. What's going on? More »
Two big charts and two big questions about inequality. More »
Free money for banks and not-so-free money for everybody else isn't such a crowd-pleaser. In fact, it seems like welfare for the wealthy. It doesn't take much financial acumen to make a profit when you can get money for nothing from the Fed and lend it back to the government for a few hundred basis points. How can normal people get in on this? That's what former FDIC chief Sheila Bair asked in a recent tongue-in-cheek piece calling for the Federal Reserve to give… More »
It turns out that hard money and austerity are a disaster whether it's 1932 or 2012. More »
Is the new French president a "dangerous man"? Let's hope so, for the continent's sake. More »
In a hypothetical world where we taxed based on height rather than income, the truly giant should pay much more than the merely giant. More »
Ben Bernanke could use some more friends -- at the Federal Reserve. More »
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans suggests a major break from the central bank's orthodoxy. More »
Here's the one number that proves inflation isn't "really" 10%. More »
The Federal Reserve is crucifying the U.S. economy on a cross of two-percent inflation. More »
The austerity debate is over. It's bad for growth and doesn't save money on borrowing costs. More »
