Welcome To EconWatch

4793374This new blog on CBSNews.com is devoted to chronicling a topic that's shaping up to be the most important story of 2009. Much of the news is grim: Stocks prices have plummeted by nearly half, and economies around the world are shrinking. On the other hand, January's unemployment rate of 7.6 is not nearly as high as 10.8 percent in 1982 or the truly massive job losses during the Great Depression.

EconWatch will feature original writing and commentary from our staff in New York, Washington, San Francisco and other bureaus. We will also highlight our award-winning coverage from other components of CBS News, including 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News and Face the Nation.

And because we know the Internet is a large place and other Web sites have interesting things to say, we'll point you toward other news organizations and some of the more thoughtful bloggers.

We hope you'll bookmark cbsnews.com/econwatch and the accompanying RSS feed. Also, we know you, our readers, will have information, thoughts, and perhaps stories you'd like to share; you can reach me by e-mail.

On a personal note, I've been writing the Other People's Money column for CBS News since October 2008 (here's the RSS feed), with a focus on the bailout, federal spending and the stimulus legislation that President Obama signed yesterday. I'll continue to write the column and contribute to EconWatch too.