Weekend reading

This is a weekly post we publish every Friday with links to articles we think anyone interested in equitable growth should read. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week we can put them in context.

The importance of accounting

Should we account for bad investments in gross domestic product? Noah Smith says no [bloomberg view]

“It is not possible for a human to know whether Bank of America made money or lost money last quarter,” says Matt Levine, referring to bank earnings reports [bloomberg view]

Silver linings

Ben Walsh finds the upside of falling oil prices [huff post]

Problems at the bottom of the ladder

Ylan Mui looks at ways regional Federal Reserve Banks are helping community development [wonkblog]

Chico Harlan documents the rise of rent-to-own industry in the wake of the Great Recession [storyline]