Links for 2012-02-03

• S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks - NYTimes.com
• I Still Don’t Get Why the ECB Hiked Rates - Rebecca Wilder
• Which Romney Is Romney? - Brad DeLong
• Sociology of knowledge: Berger - Dan Little
• Chris Giles on UK Austerity - mainly macro
• America's Disastrous Public Sector Construction Plunge - Matt Yglesias
• Progress on Letting Big Banks Fail - Simon Johnson
• We’re More Unequal Than You Think - NYRB
• Criticism From Republicans on Fed Strategy - NYTimes.com
• 244 Members of Congress Flunked Arithmetic - EconoSpeak
• How Globalization Nearly Exterminated the Buffalo - Tim Taylor
• Strengthening Economic Security in Retirement - Krueger and Sperling
• Fed’s Evans Would Back ‘Very Aggressive’ Debt Purchases - WSJ
• The Problem with the Profit Motive in Finance - Justin Fox
• The Cyclical Dimension of the Safe Asset Problem - David Beckworth
• (Non) performativity in economics - Chris Dillow
• Private Equity and “Job Creation” - The Baseline Scenario
• How spider webs achieve their strength - MIT News
• Bernanke on Fiscal Policy: ‘Do No Harm’ - WSJ
• Bernanke Defends Fed Inflation Stance - WSJ
• The Economic Outlook and the Federal Budget Situation - Ben Bernanke
• Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decline to 367,000 - Calculated Risk
• Europe without euro and EU - Bruno Frey
• Central Bankers in the Line of Fire - Luigi Zingales