First up, the celebration in blogland of Milton Friedman's immeasurable contributions to economics, and beyond:
Mark Thoma relays his own experience with Dr. Friedman's intellectual generosity, and links to the professor's final, up to the very end, contribution to the Wall Street Journal, on why money matters.
Mark Thoma highlights a working paper by Larry Kotlikoff, Ben Marx, and Pietro Rizza showing that even high-income individuals are, Mark's words, "surprisingly dependent on Social Security to maintain their living standards during retirement." To my mind, this is a good illustration of how important it is to start Social Security reform well in advance of the time we when the "financing" of the system runs out.
And just to emphasize that Mark's blog remains a treasure trove of stuff you should read, you will find the text of a new article from the San Francisco Fed's Michele Cavallo explaining the interplay of interest rates, exchange rates, and the so-called "carry trade" and a nice post on money and inflation.