What We Read Today 20 March 2014

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

• Pay it forward: Plan would allow Michigan students to attend college for ‘free’ (David Jesse, Detroit Free Press) Pending legislation in Michigan would allow students to receive tuition-free college education by signing a pledge to pay 2% of their income for five years for each year they attend junior college on the program. For a university education the payment is 4% for five years for each year of tuition under the program.

• The Forgotten Reason Behind Low Wage Growth (Sam Ro, Business Insider) Lower productivity growth correlates with slower wage growth. See also GEI Analysis: Private Investment: Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

• Every Viking ‘Fact’ Is Wrong (Nico Hines, The Daily Beast) Vikings were more traders than raiders. Their fearsome atrocities derive from their occasional victims’ written records rather than their own – the Vikings were illiterate. The ‘northmen’ wee no more violent than any other people of their era, but they were more wide ranging and founded settlements over almost half the globe, from Russia (name comes from a Norse word) and Ukraine on the east to North America on the west. Climate change (cooling) chased them back from the western North Atlantic but their eastern settlements developed into modern countries.

• 10 Big Estate Planning Mistakes of the Rich & Famous (Dan Berman, ThinkAdvisor) No one wants to think about dying, but it is important to do that at least once to draw up a will and usually more than once to update when life circumstances change. And a will is not a good do-it-yourself project. Get a competent estate lawyer!

• Vladimir Putin Defends Crimean Referendum in Speech, Signs Treaty of Accession (Truthdig) Hat tips to Chuck Spinney and Roger Erickson. Read translation of Putin’s speech.

• Fischer Says Bailout of Financial Firm Should Never Happen Again (Aki Ito, Bloomberg) Hat tips to Michael Hartig at Global Economic Intersection Discussion (LinkedIn) and to Cam Hui at Seeking Alpha. The nominee to be Fed Vice Chair, Stanley Fisher, says governments must “devise measures to assure taxpayer dollars are never again used for a bank bailout“. One good way to do that is to remove the banks from the public money system as others have suggested. See GEI Opinion: A Nonpareil Public Bank: The Fed and Amend the Fed: We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street and 100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility.

Today there are 13 additional articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

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