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Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, as well as a distinguished senior fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

Recent Articles

Of Our Time: Surplus Worship

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

There are two great fiscal legacies of American liberalism since Franklin Roosevelt. One is the invention and broad public acceptance of social insurance—notably Social Security, unemployment compensation, and Medicare. The other is the use of public spending, both to increase human and physical productivity over the long term and for macroeconomic stimulus during recessions. There are of course other activist uses of modern government—to regulate economic inefficiency and to advance social justice—but social insurance and social investment are the two fiscal pillars of modern liberalism.

How to Rescue the Economy

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

The economy now seems headed for serious recession. How to fight a shadowy enemy is
necessarily Topic A, but rescuing the economy is not far behind.

The economy is plummeting for several interrelated reasons. The stock market was already falling
sharply before Sept. 11. The speculative excess of the late 1990s financed trillions of dollars of
investments that will never return profits. Once investors grasped that, the market headed south. So this
is not just a blow to investor psychology; the economic blow is real.

Ironically, Gore's Biggest Worry May be About Oil

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

The record economic boom is near a tipping point. Although no serious
inflation is being generated by the sizzling economy, increases in oil prices show up in the general price index. They also worsen America's balance of trade.

Meanwhile, the weakness of the euro is depressing profits that American
companies earn abroad. On all these counts, the stock market is getting very nervous.

A big stock market correction would cool off both consumer and business spending. It might scare off the foreign investors who keep buying our bonds. In this context, a misstep by the inflation-phobic Federal Reserve could help send the economy into deep recession.

Let's Have Real Shared Sacrifice

Robert KuttnerDec 17, 2001

Retailers are not expecting a great Christmas season this year. Shoppers have less money
in their pockets and more worries about their economic future. The very act of
shop-til-you-drop, always a little bizarre as a form of Yuletide expression, feels especially
unseemly in wartime, even when rationalized as a patriotic act of economic stimulus.

Low Marx

Robert KuttnerDec 07, 2001



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