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The Price of Inequality: Interview With Joseph E. Stiglitz
The Nobel Prize-winning economist on how the gulf between the rich and the rest endangers our future
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What Part of 'Austerity Isn't Working' Don't People Get?
As I prepared for a talk on austerity last week, I found myself a bit stuck. What can you say other than that it’s very clearly not working, nor should we expect it to, nor has it ever? And then I hit upon what I think is the key question: Why do governments stick with […]
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Why Obama's Deportation Shift Is Good Policy
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children are safe from deportation and can apply for work permits under a new policy announced by the president this morning. I like this policy. Key to immigration reform is controlling inflows from the border. History shows that comprehensive reform is impossible without that, […]
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We Can Tame the Debt Without Breaking Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
It's conventional wisdom among everyone from Republicans (and too many Democrats) in congress to the Washington Post editorial page to members of blue-ribbon committees (cf., Bowles/Simpson) that, thanks to our huge and all-devouring national debt, we can no longer afford Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. Like a lot of conventional wisdom, this is wrong. But don't […]
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Another Lousy Jobs Report Points to Need for More Stimulus
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released the employment and unemployment results for May and the picture ain't pretty: the pace of job creation has once again slowed significantly. Job growth for May came in at only 69,000 jobs, the worst month in a year, and unemployment ticked up to 8.2 percent, though largely because […]
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Why Obama Is No Big Spender
To the list of things that everyone knows is true … except for they’re not, add this one: President Obama’s been a big, huge, spender. His profligate spending, as Gov Romney puts it, created a "prairie fire of debt." In fact, President Obama's spending record is the lowest of any president since Eisenhower, according to […]
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Democrats About to Give Away the Store on Bush Tax Cuts. Seriously??
Whenever I do anything my 12-year old daughter finds embarrassing – which is pretty much whenever I do anything—she says, "Really, Dad? Seriously??" That was pretty much my reaction to House minority leader Rep Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) letter to Rep Boehner yesterday, wherein she mixed a very good idea with a very bad one. Details […]
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What a Scam: Poor Kids' Money Snatched by Private Schools!
Read this (i.e., unless you’re the Hulk – saw The Avengers last weekend, and you don’t want Bruce Banner getting all riled up). It’s more top-notch muckraking from the New York Times, this time exposing clear abuse of a state-level tax education credit. Instead of supporting poor kids whose families want to send them to […]
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How Financial Reform Saved JPMorgan - and the U.S. Taxpayer
I was debating someone earlier who took the following position: "All this uproar around JPMorgan’s big loss is unwarranted. Sure, investors lost a bunch of money on a bad, sloppily-managed bet. But that’s the point: investors, not taxpayers, lost money. If anything, this shows that Dodd-Frank type reforms are not necessary." The Romney campaign made […]
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Bill Clinton: How to Tame the Debt Without Screwing the Poor and Middle Class
Go ahead and sue me, but I really like listening to Bill Clinton. The former president sat down for an interview with Tom Brokaw yesterday at a conference in Washington D.C., and was the voice of reasoned experience. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I agree with most of it. And I can’t […]
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