Bear Flag Blog

Both by way of Krugman:

1) The collapse of the European periphery, which has been very dramatic in Iceland, continues on the other side of the nominal continent in the Ukraine. "In a year when you would think little would surprise us the sharp change in real Ukraine GDP dynamics has been astonishingly swift, with the growth rate moving from the 11% year on year expansion registered in August to the 14% year on year contraction reported in November."

2) Here is an interesting paper (PDF) about corruption, or rather the perhaps surprising lack thereof, in the administration of welfare during the New Deal. "The possibility of providing cash payments to a quarter of the nation’s families offered an opportunity for corruption unique in the nation’s history. Surprisingly, however, while the administration of public relief was widely regarded as corrupt before 1933, the modern federal/state public welfare system that developed out of the New Deal reforms is often castigated as bureaucratic, but rarely corrupt. What changed? How did the country enter the Depression with a public welfare system riddled with political manipulation and emerge with one that was not?"