PBS NewsHour - Making Sen$e

[Watch Video] Thursday marks the penultimate installment of our extended profile of economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman here on Making Sen$e. The topic: What happened in the great crash of ’08? Are we in danger of forgetting the lessons learned and getting ourselves into yet another financial disaster? (Transcript below.) Our response to Krugman comes from Russ Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He hosts a weekly podcast EconTalk and created the Keynes-Hayek rap videos with John Papola (which debuted here on Making Sen$e, and now have over 5 million views on YouTube). He blogs with Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek. His latest book is The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity. He has written an extended essay on the financial crisis: “Gambling With Other People’s Money: How Perverted Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis.” And if you haven’t already, check out our previous installments: Krugman on European austerity, with a response from Jacob Kirekegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics: Paul Krugman on Germany’s ‘Whips and Scourges’ Krugman focused on Spain and Germany with critique from Terence Burnham: Paul Krugman on Europe ‘Doing the Unthinkable’ Krugman on his former boss, Ben Bernanke: Paul Krugman on Ben Bernanke’s ‘Green Shoots’ Response: ‘This Isn’t ‘One of Those Crazy Things’ Russ Roberts Krugman’s story of the crisis is that it was just one of those things, as Cole Porter would put it — just one of those crazy flings. One of those episodes of exuberance that markets are prone to when things are too quiet for too long. He also blames free market dogma — an ideology “that was not just pro-market but religiously pro-market that markets are never wrong, that all government regulation is bad, that government is never the solution it’s always the problem, so that we had a kind of reckless removal of the safeguards on the system all on top of what would probably have been a gradual march to crisis anyway.” There should have been more defaults and bankruptcies that would have reminded investors of the real risks they were taking. –Russ Roberts It’s an interesting claim. And there is something to it. There was some deregulation of the financial sector — Glass-Steagall was repealed, and some non-regulation where new products such as derivatives were left alone. But regulation is only one measure of government intervention. The last three decades saw government intervene relentlessly in financial markets to bail out creditors of large financial institutions making it easier to borrow money and finance imprudent risk-taking with other people’s money. In 1984, the government rescued the creditors of Continental Illinois, the seventh largest bank in the country, giving birth to the notion that some banks were too big to fail. In 1995, the U.S. government guaranteed Mexican bonds to avoid a default protecting not just Mexico but the billions of dollars that U.S. investment banks were owed and could lose if Mexico was unable to roll over its debt. In 1998, the Federal Reserve orchestrated the rescue of Long-Term Capital Management. And of course, in 2008, the government rescued the creditors of Bear Stearns, CitiGroup, Fannie, Freddie, and others. Lehman Brothers’ and Washington Mutual’s demises were the exception to the rule. The rule of rewarding creditors who financed bad bets sent the wrong signal for way too long. Fixed-income investors–bond-holders and lenders–have a fixed upside. They only care about avoiding the downside of bankruptcy. They are the watchdogs of recklessness. But if you tell lenders they have nothing to lose, you are subsidizing recklessness. When you subsidize recklessness

[Watch Video] This week we’re profiling one of the more prolific, public and controversial economists — Paul Krugman. We couldn’t fit everything of interest into one piece, so over the next few days we’re rescuing some of his arguments from the cutting room floor, including his thoughts on the euro crisis and Fed head Ben Bernanke. For the other side, we’re including critiques from critics. Monday we spotlighted his take on European austerity with a response from Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute. Tuesday features the economist’s view on Spain’s euro-woes and its housing bubble, and what Krugman thinks Germany should do about it (namely, accept a rise in inflation). Our critical response comes from Terence Burnham, my microeconomics teacher at Harvard’s Kennedy School in the ’90s. He is co-author of “Mean Genes” and sole author of “Mean Markets and Lizard Brains.” He has run a biotechnology firm, been a money manager in Boston, and taught evolutionary biology at Harvard and negotiation at the Harvard Business School. He has now resettled in his native California with his family and teaches finance at Chapman University. A good idea came in from your comments Monday, so below Burnham’s response we are posting the transcript of the video, for those who would like to read not just the critique, but Krugman’s exchange with NPR’s Tom Ashbrook, which took place at a public event in Cambridge Massachusetts in connection with his new book, “End this Depression Now!” Response: ‘Don’t Cut the Cat’s Tail Off an Inch at a Time’ Terence Burnham Paul Krugman seems to be saying very little in this second piece. Let me recap and comment. Spanish unemployment is 25 percent. You can restate this as: there is an enormous surplus of Spanish workers. Econ 101 tells you that when there is a surplus, the price is too high. I favor exit. Repudiate all debts, devalue, start over. Spanish wages would fall, but most people would have jobs. –Terence Burnham Spanish wages are too high. How will they be lowered? There are options: a) Reduce Spanish wages in euros; b) devalue through a new Spanish currency; c) raise the prices of everything in the world so that real Spanish wages can decline while keeping nominal wages flat (i.e., inflation). Krugman favors option c. There are two problems with inflation, however: 1) It is very dangerous. The world would have to embark on an incredible round of printing money to get real Spanish wages to be competitive. What would happen? No one knows and we should all be afraid. Economists are terrible at predicting outcomes in standard times. No one can know what would happen if there were tens of trillions of printing money (“quantitative easing”) throughout the world. When the first atomic bomb was detonated, the scientists thought there was some small chance the bomb would start a chain reaction and blow up the world. Economists are terrible forecasters and the implications of unprecedented quantitative easing are unknowable. 2) It will never happen. The German public will oust Angela Merkel if she attempts an inflationary exit. In this case, the German people are smarter than Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman. So what will happen? Either grind down nominal wages over years, or exit the euro as Iceland did. I favor exit. Repudiate all debts, devalue, start over. Spanish wages would fall, but most people would have jobs. In addition, psychologically it is much better to take your pain all at once. You don’t cut the cat’s tail off an inch at a time. ….. TRANSCRIPT: ‘The Unthinkable’ Video above. Tom Ashbrook: You’re talking about, writing about the end of the EU, the end of the common currency. Paul Krugman: it’s unthinkable except that continuing down the current path is unthinkable. Spain is actually the epicenter. The Spanish

[Watch Video] By Paul Solman and Elizabeth Shell Baratunde Thurston seemed like something of a wonder: a stand-up comedian via Sidwell Friends and Harvard. I note, however, that there is now something called The Harvard College Stand-Up Comic Society, so perhaps surprise is unwarranted. And when you read Thurston’s new book, “How to Be Black,” or note that he works for The Onion, you realize that he’s so gregarious and funny, a stand-up career appears not just apposite but almost unavoidable. Despite a healthy number of reviews — 66 of them — which generally brings a book’s ratings down (or up) to Earth, Thurston’s book gets a dizzying 4.8 of a possible 5 stars on Amazon. By contrast, “The Hunger Games” gets a 4.3. Face-to-face, Thurston is just as personable as in print or on stage: a totally unpretentious, candid young man who answers all questions and bridles at none. One more word of introduction. Our interview of Thurston grew out of the closest encounter we’ve had with “going viral” — our interview with Charles Murray, author of “Coming Apart” and architect of the how-in-touch-are-you-with-white-America? quiz that more than 100,000 of you responded to. Murray and Thurston posed questions to each other — and answered them — in the New York Times a few months ago. It gave us the idea of interviewing Thurston about whether black America was also “coming apart.” When he visited Boston, we did. Here’s the result. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow @paulsolman !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @elizabeth_shell !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); The post Stand-Up Comedian Baratunde Thurston on ‘How To Be Black’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

[Watch Video] By Paul Solman and Elizabeth Shell Last week, we previewed our interview with libertarian author and think-tanker Charles Murray by publishing his quiz: How Thick Is Your Bubble? Featured in “Coming Apart,” his new book about class divide in white America, the quiz is his way of letting us figure out how in or out of touch we are with American mass culture. Take the quiz here, and see Murray’s responses to some of your questions here. The higher your score, the less cloistered you are, by Murray’s reckoning. The lower your score, the more grounded you are in modern-day America. For example: Have you bought domestic mass-market beer — Budweiser, Coors, Miller or Busch — in the past year? According to Murray and a stockpile of research he presents, the upper-crust quaffs foreign and artisanal only. As Murray puts it, “The disdain of the new upper-class for domestic mass-market beer is nearly as intense as its disdain for people who smoke cigarettes.” There are bigger questions, of course: Is white America coming apart at the seams? How sharp is the cultural divide? Why does it matter? What might we do about it? Tuesday, in a departure from traditional practice, we debut the full broadcast-ready version of our story with Murray (and a skeptic) here at Making Sen$e before it airs on the NewsHour. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow @paulsolman !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @elizabeth_shell !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); The post Author Charles Murray on Bubbles, Marriage and ‘Coming Apart’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

[Watch Video] By Paul Solman and Elizabeth Shell A while back we asked you to submit your most pressing personal finance questions so that I could put them to Carl Richards, the napkin-sketching, New York Times-blogging, financial literacy-teaching author of the excellent money manual, “The Behavior Gap.” The questions poured in. Richards’ answers, meanwhile, require some time to digest. So Thursday we’re unveiling a new miniseries here on Making Sen$e: Carl and Paul on Personal Finance, complete with Carl’s famous hand-drawn learning aids. Please submit questions for future installments in the comments below. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow @PaulSolman !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); The post The Financial Answer Man: Carl Richards Takes Your Questions appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

By Elizabeth Shell [Watch Video] A new college grad’s guide for what to do after earning that higher education degree: Buy a suit Find a job Start saving for retirement Move back home with mom and dad Wait, move back home? Yes, sociologist Katherine Newman tells us. Rather than finding an apartment with friends or buying a home of one’s own, Newman has found that after graduation, more and more 20-somethings are returning to live with their parents. In her book, “The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition,” Newman points to the simple economics of it all: a down global economy coupled with increasingly expensive education costs make staying at home a financially attractive decision for an increasing number of young adults. “We now have outsourcing and downsizing and a much bigger temporary labor force than we had before….It was new entrants to the labor market who were really most affected by those changes….And that left this generation, and it will be all succeeding generations unless this changes, without really any other reasonable option, except being in an accordion family,” Newman says. And the staying-on-with-the-parents trend isn’t confined to the United States. Newman found similarities across the globe, though parents had different explanations as to why their adult children were living with them. In Japan, Newman found parents blaming themselves: It’s all about how these kids these days, they’re not behaving properly, they have rejected our way of life, they don’t seem to know how to grow up. And then if you probe a little deeper and say: Well, why did that happen? You get a very mournful account: We failed as parents. In Spain, politics was seen as the problem: The Spanish baby boom generation was…an activist generation during the end of the Franco regime. And so they are an intensely political generation, and their explanations for why things happen do tend to run in a political and left direction. So they will say: My child is still at home because the government…permitted short term employment, part-time wages and within less than a decade a huge chunk of Spanish youth were found in those kinds of jobs….They couldn’t earn enough money to own a home and there’s very little rental housing in countries like Spain. In Italy, it’s love and strong family bonds: The Italians basically say: ‘Well, I love having my children at home. Why would they ever leave me?’ And in fact, when you get to the south of Italy, which is still a very agrarian country, for them a child leaving is about migrating to find work, because there is no work. So for them, keeping your children at home is a symbol of stability and capacity to hold on to your family. Watching them leave — that’s a terrible shame. More on Tuesday’s NewsHour. But one aberration: Kids in Nordic countries are not boomeranging back. Same economic problems, different outcomes. Given this is a post on Valentine’s Day, you might be surprised to know Newman thinks it might have something to do with a lack of amore. Watch our video above. Now we want to know, what do you think? Did you stay or move back home after graduation? Why? Are you a parent of a boomerang grad? Did you move out and think there’s something else at play Newman missed? Let us know in the comments below, or tell us on Facebook. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow @PaulSolman !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); The post Boomerang Kids: When College Grads Move Back Home appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

[Watch Video] By Elizabeth Shell. Video: Sheila Bair and Paul Solman talk about how simple math and financial education, like the savings lessons in her children’s book ‘Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock,’ might have helped avert the financial crash. Sheila Bair, known for her tenacity and contrarian tenure as chairwoman of the FDIC, has a message she wants everyone to learn: Don’t buy an inflatable moose head for your wall. Some context, lest this interior decorating advice seem slightly out of place for a business and economics page: Bair, now senior advisor at Pew Charitable Trusts, believes much of the financial crisis could have been averted (or, at the very least, diminished) by money-and-math education. “I think we would not have had as big a problem if policy makers had been more numerate,” Bair told us recently. “I’ve been a regulator all my life and I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen to consumers. And some that they’ve imposed on themselves.” Americans are in deep financial distress. As consumers, we’re in debt to the tune of $2.45 trillion. And the Federal Reserve estimates 60 percent of families saw their wealth decline from 2007 to 2009, the most recent data available. Investors not doing their homework, loan brokers with financial incentives to push as many mortgages out the door as possible, pay-day loans, subprime mortgages — all were in Bair’s eyes exploitative. Learning simple money principles at an early age would have helped people resist them. “Money and math skills go together quite closely. And for many kids it would perhaps be a more meaningful education because later in life, most of us are not going to be mathematical engineers or use sophisticated math in our careers. But we will all have personal finances to manage.” Which brings us back to the inflatable moose head. Bair points to the short-termism (that ‘I have to have this now’ feeling) of many consumers and policy makers as a precipitator of the crisis. So she wrote the children’s book ‘Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock.’ “Educational materials need to focus on resisting those urges for instant gratification and focusing on the long term of, ‘what’s meaningful to you, what do you want?’ This is a cultural problem and hopefully the lesson of ‘Rock and Brock’ is think for the longer term.” In the book, twin brothers Rock and Brock are given a dollar each week from grandpa for doing chores. If they’re good and save their dollar, gramps will double their savings at the end of the week. If they spend it, they get just one buck again. Thus, the lesson: savings grow. Unfortunately, Rock doesn’t get it. Thrilled with the weekly cash, he impulse-buys all sorts of junk he doesn’t really want or need — like the moose head. Brock, on the other hand, saves his money. By the end of the book, Brock is by far the wealthier of the two and readers have learned what Bair calls the “magic of compounding interest as a mechanism for wealth accumulation.” Bair’s other children’s book, “Isabelle’s Car Wash,” focuses on risk, investment and entrepreneurship — money lessons she thinks even little kids can — and should — understand. “I think they can understand risk, investing money in somebody else’s business endeavor. And understanding that if it makes money they make money, if it loses money, they lose money,” she said. “There are a variety of places people can invest their money, and people need to understand the risk before committing their hard earned money.” Finally, a powerful anecdote for better financial education from Duke psychologist Terrie Moffit, whom we interviewed for a story on Sesame Street teaching children how to save. She showed it to a group of bricklayers, welders, an

[Watch Video] Economic analysis of a local, family-run bread bakery is the topic of the latest dispatch from Yoram Bauman, our temporary economist-in-residence in China. Using his improving (but still a bit limited) language skills and a visit to the local Wu-Mart, he estimates the small shop’s production, profit and costs. Bauman notes that the bread-making family works nearly every day of the month, which is typical, he says, of most workers in the market by his apartment. He’s seen the same workers at the place he buys breakfast everyday – for four months. Mr. and Mrs. Yang, managers of his favorite restaurant, work 12-hour days, seven days a week. They’ll get a break when their first child is born this month. What would you expect a worker at a bakery to make, pulling eight-plus hours a day, seven days a week? Guess, and then watch this analysis. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow Paul on Twitter. The post For the Love of Chinese Bread appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

When President Obama outlines his jobs plan Thursday evening before a joint session of Congress, many of America’s unemployed will be listening for specifics that will help them out of the unemployment line and into a job. We interviewed folks at a monthly networking meeting for unemployed executives in the Chicago suburbs to find out what they are hoping the president will say in his speech. What do you think President Obama should say? Let us know on twitter with #myjobsplan, on Facebook or in the comments below. Julian Blumenthal, unemployed 15 months [Watch Video] “I don’t think that people realize that we are in a really good situation to bring manufacturing back to this country. I believe the government should be helping that process.” Laura Beal, unemployed two months [Watch Video] “[President Obama] really needs to step it up. I mean, one of his goals was to get America more highly educated because our rating internationally has fallen in the past several years and I have not seen that really happen.” Peter Sturdivant, unemployed three years [Watch Video] “What I want to hear is not a couple hundred million, because the current contractors can absorb that amount of work. I really want to hear $500 billion.” Linda Spinelli, unemployed over a year [Watch Video] “I would certainly like to hear from the president how they’re going to support shovel-ready projects in the state and local areas so we can put all our construction employees back to work.” Leonard Lamkin, unemployed two and a half years [Watch Video] “I would like to see something in the president’s statement where I could withdraw from my 401 (k), tax-free, penalty free, if I use it to pay for my mortgage, and to get health insurance.” This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow Paul on Twitter. The post What Job Seekers Are Hoping to Hear in Obama’s Jobs Speech appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

[Watch Video] Editor’s Note: Friday’s story, “Can America’s Jobless Fill American Jobs?” looked at the extent to which high unemployment is structural, and the extent to which it is cyclical. Zachary Karabell of economic research and consulting firm River Twice thinks much of what we’re seeing is structural. He sees a shift occurring in the economy which is causing a mismatch between the skills employers want and the skills job seekers have. Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, on the other hand, argues unemployment is mostly tied to the economic cycle. He believes we have a high jobless rate because the economy is relatively weak. As usual, we had a lot more material than we could fit in the piece — so we’re posting this online extra. This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour’s blog of news and insight. Follow Paul on Twitter. The post Is Unemployment Caused by a Skills Mismatch? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

[Watch Video] Video edited by Elizabeth Shell. As a follow-up to Tuesday’s story on abandoned housing demolition in Cleveland, we’re posting a short video. A show-and-tell about one vacant property, it covers all the bases – from the bank unloading to a middleman, the middleman putting it up on the Internet with misleading photos, and finally a buyer in England snapping it up and now feeling rooked. Here’s what he wrote to us: “Here is the original eBay listing and photos of the house I was sold by Best Buy Properties. I believe old photos were used. Note the terms ‘Nice duplex’, ‘Great property’, ’4 car garage’ (it is not there anymore). Taxes – $600. It is actually $898.96! I have never received a signed transfer form or a deed. I also paid for 2 building lots in Youngstown, Ohio, which they never transferred and never owned. Also see this thread on BBP [Best Buy Properties].” We tried to reach Best Buy Properties for their response but they no longer have a website and there’s no contact information listed for them. The Better Business Bureau rates them an “F”. Watch the full version of Frank Ford’s video of the abandoned property below. Follow Paul on Twitter. The post How an English Investor Dabbled in Cleveland Real Estate…and Got Burned appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul Solman and Dante Chinni of Patchwork Nation recently traveled to two counties in Ohio – Crawford and Delaware. Thirty years ago they had similar average incomes but today, they’ve grown apart. The town of Galion in Crawford County is struggling while cities like Powell in Delaware County and nearby Columbus have grown richer. In this web video exclusive, Paul and Dante discuss the two worlds they found and how the situation compares to the last story they did together on inequality in Los Alamos and Espanola, New Mexico. [Watch Video] Have any questions? Don’t miss an interactive live chat about inequality with Paul and Dante on Thursday, March 17. If you have a question (or two) you’d like them to consider, post it on Facebook here or in the comment section below. Follow along on twitter using #gapchat. The post Paul Solman and Dante Chinni Talk Economic Inequality in Ohio appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

The unemployment numbers for February are in and though economist Peter Morici says ” Don’t Break Out the Champagne Just Yet,” the data are encouraging. There are two separate surveys, remember – of “establishments” (places that employ folks) and “households” (the folks themselves). Sometimes, they tell different stories. But not for February. 192,000 net jobs added, according to the employers; 250,000 more Americans working, according to the Americans themselves. Note: the New Jobs Added figure is rounded from 5,993,000 to 5.99 million in the graphic. The headline is “unemployment drops to 8.9 percent, the lowest in several years.” That’s from the Household Survey and includes everyone who looked for work in the past four weeks but didn’t work even one hour in the past week. By post-war standards, that’s stunningly high, and the war I mean is not Iraq or the Gulf War or Vietnam or Korea, but World War II, which ended a good 66 years ago. Moreover, as we’ve chronicled in considerable detail, starting in 2003, today’s number ought to be lower than the previous high point (10.8 percent official unemployment in 1982) because millions more Americans who presumably would be counted as unemployed are in prison, on disability or not counted at all, since they haven’t looked for work in a year. See “Non-Working Numbers” and “Many Left Uncounted in Nation’s Official Jobless Rate.“ The government does report a far more inclusive statistic for under- and unemployment, “U-6,” which counts people who haven’t looked for work in the past four weeks but have in the past year — officially dubbed “discouraged” workers — plus part-timers looking for full-time work. That number finally dipped below 16 percent in February, but it’s still 15.9 percent. Our own statistic — U-7 — is even more inclusive, adding back in all those Americans dropped from the “labor force” entirely because they haven’t looked for work in a year, though they say they want a job. The “super-discouraged,” if you will. U-7 as of February: 17.7 percent, down a full percentage point from 18.7 percent when we debuted the number two months ago. The post February Unemployment Numbers: Good, But Don’t Pop the Champagne appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Our friend Dan Ariely, of behavioral psychology and economics fame, returns to Making Sen$e as a regular presence, starting today. The book that made him famous is called “Predictably Irrational,” but we think of Dan as ‘positively rational.’ That’s because his life mission is to deploy a rational understanding of our brain’s behavioral biases in the service of personal and general welfare. Such is the mission for which we’ve enlisted him here, as one of a series of eminent ‘utility enhancers’ — in plain English, happiness experts. They’ll be with us to bring the insights and discoveries of behavioral psychology and economics to improving life on earth, however marginally. Dan begins, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day, with a short message of irrational reassurance. The post How-To Economics: Irrational Assurance Tips for Valentine’s Day appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Today’s post introduces the fourth of country singer Merle Hazard’s Euro-shanties, this one taking off on the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th. Teutonic C&W. Merle (if not Beethoven) will do anything to educationally amuse. So will we. _pap_embeddable('news01s47a3qda1',322,212,{ pap_usecache:true }); But given the gravity of the week, we’ve added a serious post earlier today as well: my economics take on the President’s State of the Union, with a word or two on the speeches that followed. And remember the contest we’re running: you write your own Euro-crisis lyrics to a tune of your choice. You can simply put them in the comments box below, or on our social sites: my Twitter and my ‘Solman Classroom’ YouTube, NewsHour’s Facebook page and on Twitter, The competition is already stiff. We choose the best one and Merle records it, to be posted right here. The post Ode to Germany: Merle Hazard, Backed by Beethoven appeared first on PBS NewsHour.