This new CRS report has lots of links to state and federal websites:

• Authoritative Resources on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). by Kim Walker Klarman and Julie Jennings, Congressional Research Service, R40244 (September 10, 2009) [11 pages. PDF].

The following list of authoritative resources is designed to assist in responding to a broad range of constituent questions and concerns about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), P.L. 111-5. Links to the full text of the act, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, White House fact sheets, and federal, state, and municipal government websites are included, along with other useful information. This list reflects information that is currently available on the Internet. It will be updated regularly as other relevant material becomes available.

Here's a thought for CRS reports like this one that are largely lists of links that CRS intends to update regularly: Why not put this online and make it (and all the updates) available for everyone? Is there any reasonable reason not to do so?

New Economy Analytics, Resources and Alerts, By Marcus P. Zillman, LLRX, March 18, 2009.

Some of the links you'll find here are old friends, but you're bound to find at least one or two new ones that will become indespensible.

Recovery.gov is back up. This time, it has many more features. It is a website that, according to the website:

Lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. There are going to be a few different ways to search for information. The money is being distributed by Federal agencies, and soon you'll be able to see where it's going -- to which states, to which congressional districts, even to which Federal contractors. As soon as we are able to, we'll display that information visually in maps, charts, and graphics.

You can read a full copy of the bill, share your recovery story, and learn more about the President's accountability & transparency objectives. And check out the "Where is Your Money Going"? page for a simple visual representation.

www.EconomicRecovery.gov is a resource for the American people to find help to keep their homes, find jobs and protect their savings. It is a multi-agency site supported by the White House, Treasury, Commerce, USDA, Labor, HUD, SBA, and the FDIC. The url redirects to http://www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/EconomicNews/index.htm?er=true and I found that the site seemed busy and loaded slowly...

In light of all this financial upheaval, I've been trying to find good sources for learning basic economic concepts. I must admit that I haven't taken economics since high school, a class that consisted of one semester learning to balance checkbooks... and that was about it. Lately I've been reading a basic economics book, and have another on my to-read list, but it struck me that what I really needed was a series of short educational publications on specific economic topics.

Hmmm... government documents, anyone? Here are some helpful documents and websites I'm using.

• Federal Reserve Education
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Publications
• US Monetary Policy
• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Publications
• The Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy and the Economy
• Free Enterprise, the Economy and Monetary Policy
• Everyday Economics
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• Understanding the Federal Budget

Please comment if you've got further resources--I'm fascinated to see them!

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Digital Library

The BEA digital library of seminal documents related to the history of the U.S. national economic accounts. The library includes key Survey of Current Business articles from the 1930s through the 1990s, early reports by the Department of Commerce on the measurement of national income and product, volumes from the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Annual Review articles through 1974, and selected other documents....

The Digital Library has recently undergone a major expansion. It was first launched in June 2006, and now includes 1,141 articles from the Survey of Current Business, spanning from 1934 to 1992. The latest update, brought online May 14, 2008, introduces 111 new articles from the 1980s, adding some of the most recent content to the Digital Library yet available.

...The Digital Library now contains a total of 1,158 documents, including those that were not originally published in the Survey of Current Business.

See also: more about the Digital Library Expansion.

Macroeconomic modeling might not be everyone's cup of tea but for those practitioners of the "dismal science", computer-based economic modeling is essential.  David and Gauresh are two World Bank staff who work with economic data.  In a kind of internal "grassroots" programming effort they've built a web interface to access the World Bank's economic simulation models.  The nice twist is that they plan to offer it free to anyone who wants to use it.  I met them this winter and I've been following their progress for several months now.  Today I learned that the site is now on the web.

Some blurbage about iSimulate:

• Policy makers, students and others in developing countries are able to simulate domestic policies, analyze the impact of international developments and do cross-country analyses from remote locations.
• It is possible to organize collaborative forecasts and analyses of the world economy with teams of individuals spread across the globe.
• Provides a user-friendly and standardized interface to often complicated macroeconomic modeling tools.