By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
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You Thought the Mortgage Crisis Was Over? It's About to Flare Up Again (TNR)
With a large number of mortgage relief measures scheduled to end in the coming year, David Dayen says that many foreclosures will seem as though they were only deferred from 2008.
Why the Robots Might Not Take Our Jobs After All: They Lack Common Sense (NYT)
Neil Irwin reports on MIT labor scholar David Autor's new paper, which argues that robots can't handle common-sense decision making, so they'll only be able to replace certain kinds of jobs.
- Roosevelt Take: Autor presented a version of this scenario in his video speculation for the Next American Economy project.
Middle Class is Excluded from America's Economic 'Recovery' (The Guardian)
Heidi Moore points out that the recovery isn't much of one for most Americans, and the economists who gathered in Jackson Hole this weekend can't do much to fix that.
Fed Chair Cautious on Timing of Rate Rises, Questions Health of Job Market (AJAM)
Janet Yellen's first speech at the Jackson Hole conference defended her approach, arguing that caution is still needed because the long-term effects of the recession aren't yet clear.
Could America Accept Another FDR? (WaPo)
Fred Hiatt wonders whether modern political discourse and journalism would permit another person like Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his illness and complicated family, to make it to the White House.
Middle Class Households' Wealth Fell 35 Percent from 2005 to 2011 (Vox)
Danielle Kurtzleben reports on new data from the Census Bureau, which shows a dramatic change in U.S. households' net worth, particularly for the bottom three quintiles.
New on Next New Deal
The Ferguson Challenge to the Libertarians
Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal says the profit-motivated criminal justice system in Ferguson, heavy on court fees and fines, looks a lot like the libertarian ideal of privatization – and it isn't working.