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Recession Briefing: Paulson Defends AIG Rescue

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama promised to focus intently on the issue of most immediate concern to the nation: jobs. Obama sought to restore public confidence in his administration and to persuade Americans that he is directing his attention more fully to the economy. (New York Times)

Hit by the recession, Mexican migrants sent home 15.7% less in remittances last year, a record drop, the country’s central bank reports. Although it marked the second straight yearly decline — and the second drop since tracking began in 1996 — migrants still sent home big bucks: about $21.2 billion. (USA Today/On Deadline)

College and university endowments in the United States and Canada collectively lost $93 billion during the 2009 fiscal year, according to a study jointly released Thursday. The average institution lost 18.7% after fees. (Forbes)

Former U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson said had federal policy makers not acted to save AIG, a failure of the financial system could have ensued, and pushed the U.S. unemployment rate to a Great Depression-esque 25%. (BloggingStocks) Timothy Geithner also defended the AIG bailout. (New York Times)

President Obama’s proposed fee on banks to pay for the financial bail out has solid popular support. A poll of 800 likely voters showed that 57% of respondents supported the tax when the pollster described it as a “responsibility fee” that will “discourage big bonus payouts and ensure the big banks that caused the crisis pay for the bailout.” (Wall Street Journal)

The battered market for new homes ended 2009 with a whimper, according to government data released Wednesday, fueling concern that recent improvements in the housing sector could be short-lived. In December, new-home sales fell 7.6 percent from the previous month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 342,000, according to the Commerce Department (Washington Post)

The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance fell slightly last week. There were 470,000 initial job claims filed in the week ended Jan. 23, down 8,000 from a revised 478,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report. (CNN/Money)

Robert J. Shiller, a well-known Yale economist, suggested on Wednesday — a bit whimsically — that economic bubbles could be diagnosed using the same methodology psychologists use to diagnose mental illness. (New York Times/Dealbook)

A key question at the heart of the controversial bailout of AIG is just how much money the government lost and who was on the winning end. But here an unredacted document lists the damage in detail. (Huffington Post)

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Tags: bailout, college, economy, financial crisis, jobs, recession