From Durable Goods To China Trade: What We're Reading

Morning! Three recommended reads and one news item, followed by a fun picture after the jump.

— If you're trolling for pure juicy reading, start with "How Firms Wooed a U.S. Agency With Billions to Spend," a New York Times story with glamorous names — Black Rock, Goldman Sachs — and some great numbers, too, like $1.6 billion.

— Eliot Spitzer's living all over the American middle class (and the health care overhaul) with "In Sickness and in Wealth," a Slate column about the growing gap between rich and poor in the U.S. and the question of whither the middle class. Call it the question that keeps on giving.

— Brad Setser takes a long, fruitful walk into the weeds on the new accord between China and the U.S. Yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced a new resolve to reduce the trade imbalance by getting Chinese consumers to shop more and Americans to save more. Setser gives you a graduate seminar in this complicated dance.

— Pure news: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that new orders for manufactured durable goods — the big stuff like refrigerators and washing machines — fell by 2.5 percent last month. The orders had gone up for two straight months. If you take out transportation, new orders increased 1.1 percent. Shipments fell for the eleventh straight month, by .2 percent, and inventories for the sixth straight month, by .9 percent. Think of the declines as air slowly leaking out of a balloon. Economist Ian Shepherdson's take: "Overall, the core picture has stabilized."

If you're reading something great, please add it in the comments.

Thanks to Twitter pal @beckerben for the picture after the jump.

@beckerben

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