The Euro: Can the center hold?

Economist Austin Goolsbee, who recently left the administration to return to teaching at Univ. of Chicago, doesn't believe the Eurozone can hold together...and he explains succinctly why it was a bad idea in the first place. Goolsbee's interview with Ezra Klein is worth a read in it's entirety - a concise picture of some of the central problems in this confusing and complex picture. HERE.

A voice from the "1%" explains a fundamental economic reality: The rich are not the "job creators."

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer - who helped launch Amazon.com among other technology start-ups - ventures beneath the simplistic rhetoric and calculated misconceptions about job creation and rational tax policy in this op-ed from Bloomberg:

It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.

Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.