When Krugman makes me roll my eyes.

Krugman had a pretty grim outlook of the possibilities of the stress tests before, as I mentioned before, referring to an interview he had. Now he says that "everyone knew" that the banks would be all right. It seems to me that he makes a lot of leaps of logic.

Here's some other commentary on the stress tests.

Hurricane claims, grocery stores, inventive cities, recession news, and Venezuela

2008 hurricane claims put Texas home insurance companies in the red. Ouch. Hurricanes continue to affect us. I guess whoever designed the hurricane insurance plans didn't know how much risk was actually involved, or those insurance companies didn't properly prepare themselves for such a situation.

Grocery stores are doing well during the recession.

Houston is one of the world's most inventive cities. We're pretty creative people! I don't think a lot of people believe this, though.

Productivity and labor costs are up. You might expect this from a recession, as companies try to focus on efficiency to weather the rough times.

Venezuela is seizing the assets of more oil service companies. I would have ended my operations there some time ago.

100 days, blogging v journalism, econophysics, and jobs.

The guys at Capital Gains--Stan, Pete, and Andrew--provide their thoughts on Obama's first 100 days. Stan notes Obama's popularity, and partially attributes it to a weak opposition party. Pete, on the other hand, notes six strengths of Obama. Andrew isn't happy with how banking was handling, but admits that there is reason to be optimistic on five other fronts.

Felix Salmon compares blogging and journalism. He says that bad journalism is worse than bad blogging.

I suppose at a time when economists are being blamed for everything, it's not surprising to see more articles on econophysics. This one from Mark Buchanan. I think most economists don't take econophysics seriously, but I think it's interesting to see how other people handle similar problems--though, really, econophysics doesn't handle very similar problems as most of economics.

I like articles like this, which highlight how flexible the economy is. Though we're losing a lot of jobs, a lot of jobs are opening up, too. Sure, there may be fewer jobs created than lost, but the situation is not as dire as some may want you to believe.

History, open data, auto industry, financial planning, bachelor's degrees, and gas prices

A new blog on economic history.

Hey, world bankers like open data too! Those are great guys.

Speaking of which, Hal Varian used Google Trends to make better forecasts.

James Hamilton is still on the case, reporting about the declining auto industry.

ESPlanner, a long term financial planning website, though the site isn't always working.

Some community colleges offer bachelor's degrees. I like that degrees are becoming less expensive, but they shouldn't be easier to get. This is the classic Spence problem.

Mark Perry gives us a look at real gas prices. It looks like a falling trend since 1919, with some big spikes thrown in. And, note that the spikes take us to about back to the 1919 level anyways.

Excess demand for money, manufacturing news, grid parity, and Austrian BC theory

Nick Rowe on the importance of excess demand for money. This directly relates to what the Fed has been doing for quite some time to help the current crisis. Nick has had a lot of really good posts lately, it seems to me.

Mark Perry had optimistic news on the manufacturing front. It seems like these numbers will return to normal pretty soon, which makes me think that more focus will turn towards worsening labor numbers. Though, we're only six months or so away from the peak. Six months seems like a relatively short amount of time considering how long this had dragged out already.

John Quiggin reports that some solar power companies may be approaching grid parity, or the point where solar power is as cheap as conventional power.

Another good post from John Quiggin, he talks a little about the history of the Austrian Business Cycle, and why it isn't really taken seriously anymore by more empirical-minded economists.

Development, crowding out, NewDeal2.0, economic terminology, and China,

Here's a nice story about a UCLA grad student making a difference in the world.

The Skeptical Optimist points out that the "crowding out" theory is bunk.

Here's an interesting website providing commentary from political scientists, economists, historians, and more. NewDeal2.0.

Uwe Reinhardt tells writes an article mostly directed at economists, I think. Some our terminology shouldn't is misleading when used in public discourse. We should be careful in using it, and others should take it with a grain of salt.

Is the Chinese economic model more effecting than the US economic model? Uh, no. Despite China's growth, models show pretty clearly that underdeveloped economies will tend to have higher growth rates than developed economies. This isn't a function of types of economic systems.

Fuel efficiency, forecasts, gendered lob losses, April economic summary, and GDP growth rates

Fuel efficiency raises demand, not lower it. Efficiency lowers cost, which raises demand in the long run. I keep thinking that the short run effect should be modeled as a rise in supply, but the narrative doesn't quite fit.

Simeon Djankov says not to pay attention to the forecasts. They lag behind the news, and are thusly not worth much.

Job losses for different genders. Men have lost many more jobs than women, net. Women seem to have more recessioon-proof jobs.

April economic summary in graphs. It seems to me that most of them tell a similar story.

GDP growth rates for beginners. This is really a well-written and easy to understand post, I think.