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Dr. Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Debt, Toll Roads and Patents
Given the huge amounts of excess capacity in most sectors, it is likely that the deficits are actually increasing investment by increasing demand. In this sense, deficits are making our children richer. This would be even more true insofar as the deficits are being run to build infrastructure or to finance education and training, all of which will make the economy more productive in the future.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 A Competitive Dollar: The Missing Link in President Obama's Manufacturing Agenda
President Obama failed to commit himself to restoring the competitiveness of dollar as part of his agenda for bringing back manufacturing jobs. The value of the dollar really has to be front and central in any effort to restore U.S. competitiveness since it is by far the most important factor determining the relative cost of U.S. goods compared with goods produced elsewhere.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 The Surefire Way to End Online Piracy: End Copyright
The real lesson from the SOPA debacle is that we need to develop alternatives to copyright to support creative work. The institution of copyright dates back to the late middle ages. It may have served a useful function back then, but we will need something better for the Internet Age.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Time Is on Our Side: The Survival of Social Security
It is not only the Republicans who want to cut Social Security and Medicare; top leaders in the Democratic Party have repeatedly indicated their willingness to cut these programs.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Keystone Jobs Versus Competitive Dollar Jobs
If we want to create jobs and have put the stimulus genie off the table for superstitious reasons, a more competitive dollar provides an excellent alternative to the Keystone Pipeline. It can create many more jobs and it won't threaten the environment.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 The Cowardly Senator Wyden
In the land of the 1 percent, the way you show your courage is by demonstrating your willingness to beat up on the elderly. That gets you bucket loads of campaign contributions, high praise from the Washington Post in both its news and opinion pages, and could even get you named Person of the Year by Time.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 The Stop Online Piracy Act: Class War in Cyberspace
In reality, the higher costs that the SOPA will impose on consumers both directly, and indirectly by raising costs to intermediaries, are money out of their pockets. The SOPA is big government at its worst: an intrusion into the market to help the 1 percent at the expense of everyone else.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties (8 comments)
It's time to expose the lies for what they are. The monied class has rigged the deck to accomplish the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world. These are not people who care about free markets, capitalism, right & wrong: they care about making themselves richer at the expense of everyone else & they are willing to go to any lenghts to continue their looting.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 How Occupy Stopped the Supercommittee (1 comments)
Everyone should enjoy their Thanksgiving, grateful that the supercommittee turkey is dead. If the 99% can keep up the pressure, Congress will return to reality after the holiday.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 The Myth of the Wealthy Elderly
As retirees age, rising Medicare premiums will be reducing the buying power of their Social Security check each year. And this is the median; half of all seniors will have less income than this to support themselves.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 Greece, Home of Democracy, Deprived Of a Vote
It is true that the Greek government had lied about its budget situation. But the word among finance types is that everyone knew they were lying and went along with the joke. Goldman Sachs even designed a nifty swap that allowed it to profit from the lies.
Monday, October 31, 2011 Washington Post Discards All Journalistic Standards In Attack On Social Security (3 comments)
News outlets generally like to claim a separation between their editorial pages and their news pages. The Washington Post has long ignored this distinction in pursuing its agenda for cutting Social Security, however it took a big step further in tearing down this barrier with a lead front page story that would have been excluded from most opinion pages because of all the inaccuracies it contained.
Monday, October 24, 2011 Are Regulations Killing US Jobs? (2 comments)
Right-wing politicians repeatedly blame government regulation for the failure of the economy to generate jobs. Even though there is no truth whatsoever to the claim, right-wing politicians know that the media will treat their nonsense respectfully in news coverage.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 When Being Rich Makes Us Poor, People Should Occupy Wall Street
Somehow creating jobs doesn't rank as high on the priority list in Washington as cutting Social Security and Medicare. In short, we have an economic system that, even when it is working, has been rigged to redistribute income to the rich. And we have a political system that at a time of immense economic distress is more focused on undercutting the means of support for working families than fixing the economy.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 Why Don't the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street?
The Post ran a news article on the budget last week featuring the views of two people who headed Peter Peterson-funded organizations. These views were complimented by the views of an unnamed Republican staffer and a long-time corporate lobbyist. This was Fair and Balanced reporting at the Post.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? Is the Washington Post a Criminal Enterprise?
There is no realistic basis for the comparison between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. The proper response to Governor Perry's charge should have been to ask if he had any understanding about the country's most important social program. He committed a gaffe of monumental proportions. The media should have focused on exposing the governor's ignorance, not trying to imply that in some alternative universe he might be right.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 Does President Obama Want to Impose a Crushing Burden on Our Children?
We have two choices. We can fix our health care system and get payments to providers down to reasonable levels, as every other country in the world has done. Or, we can protect the insurers, the pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals, and the highly paid medical specialists, and tell people that they will have to do without care.
Thursday, September 8, 2011 Getting Those Republican Attacks Right (2 comments)
Tens of millions of people are suffering from this downturn. It's not fun and games. Reporters have a job here. The reporters that just copy down outlandish claims by politicians without making any effort to verify them should switch places with one of the unemployed who would like to work for a living.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Do Liberals Have to Be Losers? (2 comments)
There is nothing efficient about the policies that conservatives have used to restructure the economy over the last three decades. Progressives can design policies that are every bit as efficient, if not more so, that lead to greater equality in the distribution of before tax income. This is where the money is and this should be the focus of our political efforts.
Monday, August 29, 2011 President Obama's job creation mirage (1 comments)
There are reports that President Obama may propose some sort of tax subsidy for job creation. Such a subsidy can be bad or not so bad. One of the proposals, temporarily eliminating the employer side of the payroll tax, is a great plan -- if your intention is to give still more money to business and undermine social security.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 Why Is President Obama So Anxious to Cut Social Security? (7 comments)
Most people would be surprised to know that 5 percent of the wage growth projected over the next three decades would be sufficient to keep Social Security solvent. After all, there is a well-funded and well-connected industry of people spreading disaster stories about Social Security and its massive deficit.
Friday, August 19, 2011 John Kerry, the Lazy Senator Who Would Not Learn (3 comments)
t is more than a bit infuriating that Senator Kerry and his colleagues would now be lecturing the country on the need for hard choices. If they could have been bothered to do their damn jobs just a few years ago, we would not be in this situation today. As a result of their failure, tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 The S&P Downgrade Market Plunge Myth (1 comments)
The Wall Street crew that wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare benefits are sensing that victory is in sight. They have managed to knock jobs completely off the agenda and have made deficit reduction the near exclusive focus of economic policy in Washington. They are now setting the stage to have the Congressional "super-committee" produce a deal that will mean large cuts in both programs.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 The Economic Illiterates Step Up the Attack on Social Security and Medicare (2 comments)
Rather than being a left-right split, this is a top-bottom split. The guiding philosophy of this drive is that public money that goes to programs for middle income and poor people is money that could be in the pockets of the wealthy. For this reason, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are an offense to their sensibilities.
Sunday, August 7, 2011 How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade (1 comments)
If S&P were being honest, it would have written about the need to fix the U.S. health-care system. Instead it talked about the need to cut Medicare. Of course, if U.S. health care costs were comparable to those in any other country in the world, then we would be looking at massive surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.
Thursday, July 28, 2011 President Obama Doesn't Understand the Origins of the Deficit (1 comments)
The deficits were very much containable until the collapse of the housing bubble sank the economy. It was the economic collapse that gave us large deficits. Wall Street will suffer more than anyone from a default and will not let it happen. The public should know this, certainly Wall Street does.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 Cutting Social Security by Stealth
In the push to cut benefits, many have claimed that "all economists agree" that we should switch to the social security adjustment to the CCPI and thereby lower benefits. While the claim is not true, it is also worth pointing out that "all economists" have a very bad track record.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 President Obama's Big Deal: Cuts for Social Security, but No Taxes for Wall Street (1 comments)
President Obama wants a "big deal" on the budget, which will involve cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. The last is especially ironic, since Social Security is financed by its own designated tax. Therefore, it does not contribute to the deficit. If there is no money in the Social Security trust fund, then benefits will not be paid.
Monday, July 18, 2011 President Obama's Big Deal: Cuts for Social Security, but No Taxes for Wall Street (2 comments)
We are constantly being told by politicians -- from President Obama to Tea Party Republicans -- that America has a problem with out-of-control spending. This claim is an invention, a falsehood with no basis in reality.
Monday, July 11, 2011 Manufacturing deficit fear (1 comments)
As survey after survey shows, the vast majority of the public are incredibly ignorant of the most basic facts about the budget and the economy. If we treated their teachers in the media the way the educational reformers treat public school teachers, few economics and budget reporters would have jobs.
Monday, June 27, 2011 Right to Rent: Will the Obama Administration Finally Fix Housing? (1 comments)
As part of the foreclosure process, homeowners would be offered the opportunity to stay in their home, paying the market rent, as determined by an independent appraiser. This is the same sort of appraisal process that banks use when considering a mortgage application. It can also be structured to ensure that millionaires are not gaming the system.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 The Endgame on the Debt Ceiling
When everyone remembers what the endgame looks like, they will realize that there is no need to put essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block to get Republican support for raising the debt ceiling. The gun is pointed most directly at Wall Street's head, and this incredibly powerful lobby is not going to let Congress pull the trigger.
Monday, June 20, 2011 The Endgame on the Debt Ceiling (2 comments)
There is a strong chance that when this global economic meltdown is over, the U.S. financial sector will never hold the same place in the world. That means that with or without the ironclad financial backing of the U.S. government standing behind them, the Wall Street gang might never again be the dominant actor in international financial markets.
Thursday, June 9, 2011 To Republicans: Political Advice on Medicare
It doesn't look like the Republicans will either be able to keep their opponents from talking about their vote to end Medicare or to convince the public that they didn't really vote to end Medicare. However the Republicans do still have a third option: admit that the vote was a mistake and reverse it.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 Why Does Senator McCaskill Want to Bankrupt Our Children?
If McCaskill and the other senators are upset about this recent rise in spending then they should be going after the incompetents at the Fed and Treasury who somehow could not recognize the $8 trillion housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy. This was indeed a horrendous mistake that has been devastating to the country, but it has nothing to do with government spending.
Monday, April 4, 2011 It's Time for Representative Ryan to Man Up (2 comments)
The basic economic reality is very simple and everyone in Washington knows it. There is no way that future generations of workers will be poorer than the current one due to benefits like Social Security and Medicare. They could end up poorer if we continue to see the benefits of growth shifted to the top.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 The Deficit Hawks Target Nurses and Firefighters (2 comments)
When Pozen talks about cutting benefits for higher-income earners he is not thinking of people like Peter Peterson or Robert Rubin. He has his gun sights on people earning $40,000 to $80,000 a year. In other words, Pozen wants to cut benefits for workers like schoolteachers, firefighters and nurses.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 Debts Should be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People (3 comments)
A main goal of state bankruptcy is to allow states to default on pension obligations. This means that states will be able to tell workers, including those already retired, that they're out of luck. Teachers, highway patrol officers and other government employees, some of whom worked decades for the government, will be told that their contracts no longer mean anything. They will not get the pensions that they were expecting.
Saturday, January 22, 2011 Can Harry be a Hero? (2 comments)
There is no doubt that the forces arrayed against Social Security are enormously powerful. The wealthy hate the idea of government money going to anyone but them, and since the vast majority of Social Security benefits are going to low and middle-income families, the program is an outrage to their sensibilities.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 The Progressive Case Against Obama's New Team
The president continues to move right with his new appointments which will mean more hardship for millions.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Saving Social Security: Stopping Obama's Next Bad Deal (2 comments)
In order to avoid this train wreck, supporters of Social Security and Medicare have to restructure the options. They have to push President Obama to announce in advance that he will never sign a debt ceiling bill that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the country's two most important social programs.
Monday, August 30, 2010 Senator Simpson's Quick Budget Quiz (1 comments)
President Obama is apparently content to have an abrasive and abusive senator's son sit as co-chairman of his deficit commission. We can assume that these traits were a direct result of Sen. Alan Simpson's privileged upbringing and he is not going to change now that he is in his late 70s.
Friday, August 20, 2010 When Wall Street Rules, We Get Wall Street Rules (2 comments)
The middle class is getting whacked by the Great Recession. Fifteen million people are out of work, another 9 million workers can only find part-time jobs, and millions more have given up looking for work altogether. Those lucky enough to be employed are unlikely to see any substantial wage gains for years to come.
Friday, August 6, 2010 Crazy Economists Are Still Defending The Wall Street Bailout As The Recession Gets Worse (2 comments)
It is amazing that angry mobs have not risen up and chased all the economists out of the country. While the greed of the Wall Street gang provided the fuel for the bubble, the economists played an essential role as enablers. The Fed absolutely had all the tools needed to stop this disaster. They just lacked either the competence or the integrity, or both.
Monday, May 17, 2010 Family Friendly Cuts to Social Security: The Myth of Affluence Testing (2 comments)
Social Security enjoys enormous bipartisan support because all workers pay into it and expect to benefit from it in retirement. Taking away the benefits that better-off workers earned would undoubtedly undermine their support for the program. This could set up a situation in which the program could be more easily attacked in the future.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Taxing Health Insurance Premiums and Subsidizing Health Care Providers (2 comments)
But this is not an abstract issue. It is a concrete question of who will pay more. For some reason, when it comes to sacrifice, union workers always seem to be at the top of the economists' agenda.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Seance on Wall Street
Interest rates appear to be directly contradicting the seers' assertions about financial markets. The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is currently near 3.5%. The interest rate is not determined by people rattling off their visions about future debt defaults. It is determined by investors putting their money on the line.
Thursday, July 16, 2009 Our Economy Needs at Least $2 Trillion in Stimulus Spending Right Now -- Tens of Millions of Jobs Are at Stake (2 comments)
Different types of stimulus have different multiplier effects. One dollar of addition spending is generally estimated to have a multiplier effect in the neighborhood of 1.5, meaning that for every dollar we spend on a government project, we increase GDP by $1.50 as the people we hire go out and spend their paychecks, creating new demand.
Monday, July 13, 2009 The Washington Post (a.k.a. Fox on 15th Street) Wants 15 Million People to Be Unemployed
In short, given its near perfect track record of being 180 degrees wrong on the economy, the Post's opposition to more stimulus makes a compelling case for its merits. But, let's look at the argument. Remember back in January of 2008 when the Post told readers that: "There is not yet any proof of a recession, .... Nor is there any consensus that a recession, if one comes, will be severe."
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 What's So Scary About Offering People the Option of a Public Health Plan? (10 comments)
I am trying to do research and run a think tank. Senator Baucus might think that it is a good idea that I have to waste my time dealing with insurance brokers, but I don't, and I suspect that millions of other small employers feel the same way.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 Pecora Commission II: Super-Sleuths or Keystone Cops?
Not only did the committee confuse the public...it also undermined efforts to bring the Iran-Contra criminals to justice. Going against the wishes of Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor appointed to deal with the case, the committee gave most of the key figures immunity for their public testimony.
This time, the basic story of the current crisis is very simple. We had an $8 trillion housing bubble as prices hugely diverged
Monday, June 29, 2009 Why Won't the Democrats Back a GAO Audit? Waterboard the Fed (1 comments)
Congress has lent more than $700 billion to bankers at below market interest rates through the TARP. This was to keep the banks from going belly up. At the same time, the Fed has lent more than $2 trillion to banks and non-financial institutions to maintain liquidity.While more than 130 Republican members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, just over 30 Democrats are co-sponsors.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Spreading the Wealth Around to the Insurance Industry and Friends (2 comments)
Since there are trillions of dollars at stake, the effort is understandable. The basic story is simple. The insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply industries, along with the hospitals and the American Medical Association, have rigged the deck so that they get rich at the public's expense.Their latest compromise is a system of small cooperative insurers that will have no bargaining power. That's a cute joke....
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 NPR, the IMF, and the Global Savings Glut (1 comments)
(This article was written before the vote and posted after. An alert seemed to say the IMF gets its money.) The Obama administration is having a tough time getting its request for $108 billion for the IMF through Congress. Bank bailouts are rapidly losing popularity. And bailouts of foreign banks are probably even less popular than bailouts of U.S. banks. But, NPR is rushing to the rescue.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 GM Bailout Makes Most of Bad Situation (1 comments)
Somehow, this gift to Goldman aroused nowhere near as much anger as the bailout of General Motors. This is especially ironic, since the proximate cause of the crisis at GM and Chrysler is the crisis brought on by the irresponsible behavior of the Wall Street banks.
Monday, June 1, 2009 To Get a Systemic Risk Regulator Fire Bernanke (1 comments)
The Fed has often stepped outside the narrowly defined realm of monetary policy when it perceived larger risks to the economy. Two obvious examples are its efforts to stem the stock market crash in 1987 and its intervention in the unraveling of the Long-Term Capital hedge fund in 1998. In both cases the Fed acted because it argued that there would be much greater damage to the economy if it just let the market run its course.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Blue Cross Millionaires Are Scared to Compete With a Public Plan (2 comments)
Given the high salaries that Blue Cross of North Carolina pays its top executives and the other administrative expenses that it bears as a result of being a private sector plan with high overhead, it is not surprising that it would be afraid of a public plan. A public plan would likely charge much lower prices, thereby pulling away a large share of Blue Cross of North Carolina's business.
Monday, May 18, 2009 The Health Care Industry: Protectionism the Free Traders Love (2 comments)
Suppose people in the US paid twice as much for our cars as people in Canada, Germany and every other wealthy country. Economists would no doubt be pointing out the enormous amount of waste in the US auto industry. They would insist we take advantage of the lower cost cars available elsewhere and take steps to make our own industry more efficient. For some reason, economists do not have the same attitude toward health care.
Thursday, May 14, 2009 Why We Can't Wait To Move On Bank Reform
If we didn't live in the world we actually live in, putting Wall Street reform on hold until we fix the immediate problems with the banks might make sense. But in the world we do live in, it is precisely because the banks have an immediate problem that there is some hope of reining them in. Here's why putting that off would lead to failure.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 The Bankrupt Debate Over Bankrupting Our Children
Suppose that the federal government decided to give every newborn baby $200,000. That might seem like an extremely generous gift. [B]y the peculiar accounting of those who claim to be watchdogs for future generations, this policy would be bankrupting our kids. If that is hard to understand then you haven't been reading The Washington Post or listening to the Blue Dog Democrats or following the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Social Security: Downturn Does NOT Affect Long-Run Picture (2 comments)
It is not surprising that Social Security's annual financial picture deteriorates in a downturn. This is entirely predictable and in fact desirable. Social Security's tax revenues fall as workers lose their jobs.In short, as a result of the economic collapse there is even more uncertainty than usual around the long-term projections. This is a good reason to put off for the moment any plans to substantially alter the program.
Sunday, May 10, 2009 Rate of Job Loss Slows Moderately, Unemployment Rate Rises to 8.9 % (3 comments)
Previously reported job loss has been revised upward by an average of 86,200 in the last five months. There appears to be some decline in the rate of private sector job loss, but this will largely disappear if the revisions follow the same pattern as in prior months. Furthermore, the slowdown in wage growth (almost zero in April) suggests that workers' purchasing power will be falling in the months ahead.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 Outsourcing the Bosses: The Lesson of Fiat-Chrysler (1 comments)
If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 The Obama Administration and the Bankers: 100 Days of Solicitude (2 comments)
The Obama administration has yet to get serious about setting the long-term economy on a sound footing by bringing the value of the dollar down to a competitive level.
In the area of financial policy the Obama administration gets poor marks for its first 100 days. Instead of a letter grade, we'll just say: "needs improvement."
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Can Health Insurers Whine Louder Than Bankers? (4 comments)
Wall Street bankers have impressed the world with their ability to take or borrow trillions of taxpayer dollars and then complain about excessive government intervention into their business. This display of audacity is extraordinary even by the standards of US politics. However, the health insurance industry is gearing to give the bankers a serious contest for top spot as the biggest whiners on the national stage
Thursday, April 23, 2009 Goldman Sachs Shook Tens of Billions Out of Tax-Payers (1 comments)
The Wall Street crew has relied on its political power to rig the rules to make them incredibly wealthy. They are relying on this political power to ensure that the rules remained rigged, even though their crooked deck wrecked the economy, costing tens of millions of people their jobs, their homes and their life savings. So far, it looks like the Wall Street boys are winning.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 If the Bank Bailout Fails, Will Anyone Get the Boot? (3 comments)
This is a rude question to many people, which is why it is so important that it be asked. The Obama administration is moving forward with a massive bailout program to rid the banks of their bad assets. The plan could involve as much as $1 trillion of the taxpayers' money.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 A Trillion Dollars for the Banks: How About a Second Opinion? (4 comments)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to have the government lend up to a trillion dollars to hedge funds, private equity, funds and the banks themselves to clear their books of toxic assets. The plan implies a substantial subsidy to the banks. It is likely to result in the disposal of these assets at far above market value, with the government picking up the losses.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Pay for Play? Tax Credits for Paid Time Off (2 comments)
Congress has underestimated the severity of this downturn all along, passing a stimulus package in 2008 that everyone now concedes was inadequate. This will soon be the case with the more recent package. When Congress again realizes its mistake, there may be interest in a paid time off tax credit as the quickest and best way to get the economy back to full employment.
Monday, March 30, 2009 Geithner's Plan Will Tax Main Street to Make Wall Street Richer (11 comments)
The new consensus among the experts who missed the housing bubble is that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's plan to subsidize the purchase of junk mortgages and their derivatives will help alleviate the stress on the banking system. Oh, by the way, some people will get very rich off the Geithner plan.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 The Granny Bashers: Different Facts, Same Policy (2 comments)
The lobby includes the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with an endowment of more than $1 billion from the private equity tycoon himself. It also includes The Washington Post, which liberally sprinkles assertions about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Competing Views of Government: Universal Medicare or Government-Protected Insurance Companies (4 comments)
These competing views of government are coming to a head in the debate over national health care reform. Those who think that the role of government is to serve the public good are likely to favor some form of universal Medicare. Such a system would almost certainly save a huge amount in administrative costs at the level of insurers, providers and government oversight.
Thursday, March 5, 2009 What It's Going to Take to Stave Off Another Great Depression (3 comments)
The pundits' concern should have caused people to throw their television sets, radios and newspapers out the window. Let's suppose that the pundits are correct and the economy sinks farther and later grows more slowly than the Obama administration assumed in planning its budget. Would the pundits have Obama therefore cut more spending & raise more taxes? If the unemployment rate is 12% when Obama's first term ends!!!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 The Santelli Screed Hits Wrong Target on Mortgage Bailout (1 comments)
Santelli's screed is part of a continuing effort to blame the poor and minority communities for the economic meltdown. Furthermore, with house prices dropping at more than a 20 percent annual rate, the Cubs have a better chance of winning the World Series than these folks have of accumulating any equity in their home.
Friday, February 27, 2009 Housing Price Decline Accelerates (1 comments)
For the fourth consecutive month, prices declined in all twenty cities in the index. While prices continue to decline rapidly in former bubble markets, there were also sharp drops in some markets that had been less affected by the bubble. For example, prices in Minneapolis fell 4.1 percent in December and have fallen at a 31.5 percent annual rate over the last quarter.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Stop Baby Boomer Bashing: Protect Social Security and Medicare (1 comments)
....an all out assault on the program financed by billionaire banker Peter Peterson. Peterson has spent much of the last two decades trying to cut Social Security, Medicare, and other benefits for the elderly. He recently contributed a billion dollars to a foundation bearing his name that is primarily committed to this goal.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 With No Clear Strategy, the New Bank-Rescue Plan Offers Only More Uncertainty
The basic point is extremely simple. We have a large number of bankrupt banks. We have a public interest in keeping the banks functioning, but we have zero public interest in giving taxpayer dollars to bank shareholders or to the executives that wrecked the banks they ran.
Chalk it up to business as usual.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Progressives & Thinking out of the Box (1 comments)
The economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the housing bubble offers progressives unprecedented opportunities. But we have to be prepared to actually think big, and not just think about big programs.
There is a long list of ways in which the rules set by the government determine economic outcomes.
Saturday, February 7, 2009 Employment Free Fall Continues, Unemployment Rate Jumps to 7.6 Percent (2 comments)
In addition to the sharp decline in jobs, hours are falling also, leading to an 8.8 percent annual rate of decline in the hours worked index since October. On the whole this report is about as bad as imaginable.
Monday, August 28, 2006 Conservatives Love Government
President Bush and other conservatives like government every bit as much as any big-spending liberal. The difference is on what the conservatives want the government to do. Liberals and progressives think that government should be acting to ensure the population a decent standard of living and provide it with essential services like health care and education.
Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward.
