Economix Blog: Podcast: Paul Volcker’s Warnings, the S.E.C.’s Privacy Problem and Some Economic Pitfalls

With European leaders struggling to contain their financial crisis, many Americans may be feeling complacent. Perhaps they shouldn’t be.

Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, warns that we are not out of the woods yet, as Gretchen Morgenson writes in her Fair Game column in Sunday Business and says on the new Weekend Business podcast. Mr. Volcker focuses on two big problems.

First, he says, money market funds should be treated like other mutual funds — whose price can fluctuate — rather than as guaranteed stores of value, like bank accounts. In addition, he says, the United States needs to plan on eventually shutting down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies that now dominate the mortgage market.

The public pension crisis, another big problem afflicting the American economy, is the focus of a cover article in Sunday Business by Mary Williams Walsh. In a discussion on the podcast with David Gillen, she says Rhode Island is experiencing acute problems now, which may provide a preview of much that is still to come elsewhere in the country.

Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist, discusses his Economic View column, in which he points out four pitfalls for the American economy, which he says are epitomized by four countries that have already experienced them: Zimbabwe, Greece, Japan and France. He provides details in his column and in our discussion. Briefly, though, he is referring to the potential for runaway inflation, uncontrolled debt, a protracted slump and a relatively high tax regime.

And, in a separate conversation, Natasha Singer asks whether the S.E.C. may have inadvertently compromised the financial privacy of its own employees. The potential problem, which arose after the agency brought in an outside contractor to help it monitor its employees’ finances, is the subject of her Slipstream column in Sunday Business.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Paul Volcker’s warnings (34:10), news headlines (23:36), the public pension crisis (21:30), four pitfalls of the American economy (14:15), the S.E.C. and privacy (7:50) and the week ahead (1:43).

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=eb49a59d332af6d8593f15a46e45992f