Who gets stimulated ? (by Paul Krugman)
Fast work by the people at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, who figure out who gets what from tax plans… [Y]ou’ve got a plan where around 2/3 of the outlay is likely to be ineffective. Now. I’ve been in touch with some people on the Hill, who say that the glass is best viewed as 1/3 full rather than 2/3 empty — that it’s only thanks to the Democrats that people likely to spend their rebate are getting anything at all. And they have a point: this plan will produce some stimulus, while the Bush plan would have done virtually nothing. And I suppose that it may be true that this was the best Nancy Pelosi could get. But I just can’t bring myself to celebrate.

Senators consider rebates for retirees
WASHINGTON - Retirees living off Social Security are frustrated that they won’t get tax rebate checks through a bipartisan economic stimulus package before the House. Senate Democrats Friday began efforts to include them.

US slides into dangerous 1930s ‘liquidity trap’
The United States is sliding towards a dangerous 1930s-style “liquidity trap” that cannot easily be stopped by drastic cuts in interest rates, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned. “The biggest fear is that long-term bond rates won’t come down in line with short-term rates. We’ll have the reverse of what we’ve seen in recent years, and that is what is frightening the markets,” he told the Daily Telegraph, while trudging through ice and snow in Davos.

Union membership increases for first time in 25 years. (Think Progress)
In 2007, “U.S. unions increased their share of membership among workers” for the “first time in the past quarter of a century,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) annual union membership report released today. In the past year, “unions added about 310,000 members, raising the unionized share of the workforce to 12.1 percent from 12.0 percent in 2006.”

Welfare for Wall Street, Federal Reserve-Style (by Thomas Palley, thanks to Economist’s View)
The Federal Reserve is right to play the interest rate card aggressively since the economy-wide costs of a financial meltdown are so large. But let’s not fool ourselves about Wall Street and free markets. The Fed is using its government granted power of fixing interest rates to bailout Wall Street. That is welfare, Federal Reserve-style.