Ed Glaeser has some fascinating ideas about cities — why some thrive and others don’t. Raised in New York City, the Harvard economist studies the economic, environmental and emotional forces that shape where we live and the price we pay for our homes. I interviewed Glaeser for the "Minds Over Money" feature that ran in MONEY's December 2009 issue, and we talked a lot about the forces that move real estate prices and what’s next for the housing market. (One of Glaeser's most provocative opinions: He wants the mortgage interest tax deduction abolished.) More

Now that the home buyer's tax credits are back up and running through May, the next bit of housing-related economic stimulus is focused on homeowners who are willing to spend money to make their homes more energy efficient. More

The 401(k) is enjoying a wee bit of a corporate comeback.

Fidelity Investments, which says it's the leading provider of workplace retirement savings plans in the US, disclosed Thursday morning that some of the companies which reduced their financial contributions to 401(k) plans during the financial meltdown have started ponying up money again, or at least plan to. More

A looming shift in Federal Reserve policy could send the 30-year fixed mortgage to 6% or higher, up from Monday’s rock-bottom rate of 5.02%. For all the hullaballoo about the stimulative impact of last week’s decision to extend the $8,000 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit and create a $6,500 credit for current homeowners, a sharp rise in the bellwether mortgage rate could muck up a housing recovery. More

An unemployment rate in the double digits isn't surprising, but it arrived earlier than most economists were expecting.

I know this because I put the finishing touches on MONEY’s outlook for the 2010 job market less than a week before last Friday's unemployment report came out — the report announcing that the jobless rate had surged from 9.8% to 10.2% in October. Economists I had been talking to only days earlier hadn't forecast a rate that high. And it wasn't just the people I spoke to who had low-balled the number: In mid-October, the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter, which captures the consensus forecast of more than 48 economists, reported that the jobless rate was expected to peak at 10.1% in the first quarter of 2010. More

Last week’s stream of economic data points to the emergence of a great divide. On the positive side, annualized third-quarter GDP was up 3.5 percent compared to the prior quarter. (Keep in mind that this is an "advance" estimate from the Dept. of Commerce. Stay tuned for revisions.)  But consumer spending for September fell 0.5 percent. That’s the biggest dip since December 2008 when we were in the midst of the financial crisis. More

Five interesting stories from around the web:

• The U.S. unemployment rate cracked double digits this morning. Clusterstock takes a look at the cities where it is hardest to find a job. [The New York Times, Clusterstock]
• Report: Hundreds of credit cards are still using "unfair or deceptive practices." Cards are upping interest rates, penalties and fees ahead of regulatory changes coming in February.  [MarketWatch]
• Why do so many people fail at making a budget? It's because, according to Wise Bread, they omit a crucial task: Tracking what they spend. Here's a step-by-step guide to getting started. [Wise Bread]
• The National Association of Realtors' seasonally-adjusted pending home sales index rose for the eighth consecutive month in September, but Move.com says it didn't see its usual spike in listings last spring. The site says visitors are browsing, but not buying. [Hot Property]
• Princeton professor Daniel Kahneman discusses attitudes toward gains and losses, and why overconfidence hurts individual investors. [Nightly Business Report]

Last month, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) introduced a health-reform-bill amendment that would have prevented the federal government from requiring insurers to offer any particular medical benefits. "I don’t need maternity care," he said. "And so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive."

Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow zinged back: "I think your Mom probably did."

The left side of the blogsphere loved this. Democrats used it as fundraising opportunity.

Politicians are probably best advised to stick to a rigorous pro-motherhood line. But Kyl's point was really just an extension of a view about health insurance that a lot of Americans hold. More

A year ago, if my channel surfing habits had led me to a documentary about the Great Depression, I probably would have kept my finger on the clicker. At that point it seemed no one knew for sure if our country was heading into another depression. I'm not sure I could have forced myself to watch what could have been a glimpse into how miserable life may be over the next year — or even a whole decade. Talk about a downer. (Sure enough, moviegoers flocked to comedies during those months of doom and gloom.)

Yet twelve months later, perhaps armed with a new confidence that our economy is crawling back to safety, viewers have another opportunity to gain a better understanding of the events that unfolded during the Depression. More

With the November  30 expiration of the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit fast approaching, the wrangling in Washington over whether to extend the program is getting mighty interesting.

In early September, Senator Johnny Isakson, the patron saint of the National Association of Realtors (and a guy who made his fortune selling real estate) teamed up with Senator Christopher Dodd to back a plan that would increase the current $8,000 credit to $15,000, make it available to all homeowners (not just first timers), and double the income-eligibility rules. More

Here's part two of my extended interview with renegade supply-side economist Bruce Bartlett, including some thoughts on Medicare that might just scare the pants off you. See here for part one, and here for the less-wonky version that's running in Money's November issue.

David Futrelle: As one of the original supply-siders, you worry that supply side economics had been reduced to little more than a religion of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts.

Bruce Bartlett: That's right. A lot of what's wrong with conservative economists today is that they still act as if we're living in 1980 — as if we're facing inflation and massively high tax rates — and they're advocating policies that were perfectly appropriate for 1980 in an environment in which they make no sense. More

Bruce Bartlett is a man of strong opinions. A supply-side economist even before the Reagan Revolution, he served in two Republican administrations and then as a policy wonk and gadfly at conservative think tanks. But in recent years he's gotten fed up with Republicans who've turned supply-side economics into a crude and sometimes cynical faith in tax cuts as the solution to whatever ails us. Meanwhile, many conservatives have gotten fed up with him: his highly critical book on George W. Bush got him fired from the conservative think tank he was working at a couple of years ago.

I spoke with him recently about his new book The New American Economy, which among other things suggests that we could learn a thing or two from economist John Maynard Keynes — yep, the guy who thought government spending was the only way to pull economies out of deep depressions. The interview, which appears in the November issue of Money, has just been posted online.

We were only able to fit a portion of our wide-ranging discussion into the tight confines of the print magazine, so I thought I'd share some more of it here on the blog. More

It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if the unemployment rate will reach the 10% mark before the Dow hits its own nice round number of 10,000.

But the numbers are even worse for particular segments of the population. As USA Today reports, the jobless rate for single people is more than double that of married people — 13.5% for the unmarried in August vs. 6.3% for wedded workers. More

Catastrophes or triumphs can define generations. If you're part of "The Greatest Generation," a moniker coined by Tom Brokaw, the Great Depression and World War II molded your early life. And those first 30 years of deprivation and struggle probably influence your decisions now.

Today's Millennials (roughly, Americans born after 1980) haven't had a world war to contend with. But as we speak, their worldviews are being shaped by the most severe recession since the 1930s. Where could that lead?
More

If you want to measure the impact of the recession, there’s no better place to look than college financial aid offices. According to a just-released survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, some 90% of colleges and universities reported a spike in financial aid applications during the last admissions cycle. To meet the surge in demand, schools provided financial assistance to a larger number of  students, as well as boosted the amount of grants, loans and work-study.

Another bullet dodged. But the scramble to meet the needs of last year’s freshman class raises a couple of urgent questions. Will the schools be able to provide adequate aid for students applying for next year’s freshman class? And over the long run, will colleges remain affordable for middle-class students? More