Blog Posts by Peter Gorenstein

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Earlier this week "Dr. Doom" Nouriel Roubini and Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis author James Rickards got into a war of words on Twitter over the return of the gold standard. (Read the exchange.)

As Rickards explained last week on The Daily Ticker, he believes a return to the gold standard will do a lot to fixing the current troubles in the global financial system and the U.S. economy.

In the accompanying interview with Aaron Task, Roubini continues to disavow Rickards of his claim.

"That's total nonsense." Roubini then goes even further, calling the gold bugs who support a return to the gold standard a, "bunch of lunatics and hacks."

Why?

Roubini says the gold standard would be dangerous. In fact, he claims, the gold standard was a major reason for the Great Depression.

"One of the major causes of the Great Depression was the existence of the gold standard and the return to the gold standard after World War I -

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Congress is once again at an impasse and running out of time to make a deal to lower the country's debt, according to wide spread reports. The so-called 12-member congressional "super committee" is still split along party lines on how to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget over the next decade. The group has a November 23 deadline to come an agreement.

"I don't read more into the hour-to-hour, day-to-day reports than you should," says Jack Lew the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the accompanying interview with The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task and Daniel Gross.

With Europe in serious crisis over their rising borrowing costs and this summer's debt downgrade, U.S. lawmakers are very well aware of the stakes.

Will it allow for compromise? Lew thinks so.

"It's still premature to say it's not going to get there. The fact that there's discussion and movement leaves me still more optimistic than most," he says. "One way or another, I

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In another sign of America's fiscal mess, Jefferson County, Alabama filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history on Wednesday. The most-populous county - home of Birmingham - defaulted on more than $3 billion of debt related to a sewer system project after negotiations with creditors broke down.

The biggest loser - besides the locals - is JPMorgan Chase, the largest Jefferson County creditor who may lose hundreds of millions. It's not the first time the largest U.S. bank by assets, has had problems with this deal. In 2009, JPMorgan paid a $722 million settlement with the SEC over corruption charges related to the project.

Jefferson County won't be the last municipal bankruptcy says Jeffrey Bell, a former campaign adviser to President Ronald Reagan and currently policy director at the American Principles Project. "It was easy to borrow the money, it was too easy but now it's becoming impossible," Bell tells Aaron Task in the

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Erin Brockovich - the public advocate made famous on the silver screen by Julia Roberts - has a message for the temporary residents of Zuccotti park: Get your act together!

Brockovich stopped by The Daily Ticker set this week to discuss her new book, Hot Water and chat about her recent visit to Occupy Wall Street.

The anger and blame galvanized by the movement is understandable, she says, but without a clear message she's afraid the protest won't yield results. Simply living in a park does not create change.

"We are all frustrated," Brockovich tells Jeff Macke in the accompanying interview. "If you don't get yourself together, collectively with some leadership and message to be conveyed then it just falls on a deaf ear."

Her advice for the Occupy Wall Street protesters: get organized, get a spokesperson and make tangible demands.

Brockovich made history more than a decade ago after spearheading and winning a $333 million lawsuit for the

Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group stopped by the Daily Ticker set today to give us his take on the never ending and ever escalating European debt crisis now centered on Italy.

First, here's the latest out of Italy where the focus is political: It appears Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's days as head of the government are numbered. Berlusconi failed to get enough support in parliament today to keep his job for much longer. Now, there are reports he will resign after the country's austerity vote.

"He's lost all his political capital," says Bremmer of Berlusconi, noting he's also lost the confidence of the markets, as has been witnessed by the rising yields on short term debt.

Bremmer clearly thinks the European crisis will lead to economic hardship and recession on the other side of the Atlantic, but ultimately he's optimistic about the future of the Euro and Eurozone. As he rightly observes, very few if any important parties in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe, are

Might we be nearing the bottom of the housing market? Housing prices in the third quarter were essentially flat compared with the previous quarter, according to the latest zillow.com market report. Unfortunately, home prices do continue to fall, and are 4.4% lower when compared to last year.

While that doesn't seem devastating, the number of underwater mortgages remains a major problem. In fact, the percentage of single-family mortgages with negative equity rose to 28.6% fromm 26.8% in the second quarter. Negative equity has been on the rise since the robosigning controversy, says Stan Humphries, Zillow's chief economist.

"Once that erupted, and the pace of foreclosure slowed down, we saw a notch up in negative equity because essentially foreclosures are a process to clean out negative equity," he says.

Negative equity and unemployment are the biggest factors keeping the housing market depressed, Humphries tells The Daily Ticker in the accompanying video.

When is the carnage going to

European politicians are running out of time. After more than a year of failing to sufficiently handle the the Greek sovereign debt problem, the crisis is spreading to Italy in a meaningful way. Italy's cost of borrowing rose to its highest rate today - with two-year yields rising to over 6% -- since the country adopted the Euro.

The financial situation is leading to a political crisis in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is facing mounting to pressure to resign at home. Meanwhile, international markets are looking for the country to take bold steps to get their spending under control.

Why does this matter?
That's the topic in the accompanying video segment with The Daily Ticker hosts Aaron Task and Henry Blodget.

1. Italy is the third largest economy in Europe, and by some estimates is the third largest issuer of debt in the world.

2. Italy has EUR167 billion in debt coming due next year alone, the WSJ reports. While they can probably roll that debt over, the question is can

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Money can't buy happiness. Happiness, however, can buy you a longer life. A new study published in the National Academy of Sciences found older people who are happy have a 35% lower risk of dying over a five-year period than unhappy people.

But, how does one attain happiness? That was the topic when noted author and lecturer on spiritual matters Deepak Chopra stopped by The Daily Ticker set earlier this week to chat with Aaron Task.

Chopra, the co-author of the book War of the Worldviews, says happiness can be boiled down to a formula.

Happiness = set point in the brain (how you look at a situation) + conditions of living + voluntary choices

Let's take a closer look at these variables.

1. Set point in the brain

Whether you're a glass half full or half empty kind of person is largely formed at a young age. "Unfortunately, this happiness set point is determined for us in our childhood in the first three years of our life," says Chopra. While