RSS

Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias is a senior editor at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a former Prospect staff writer, and the author of Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.

Recent Articles

Safe European Currency

The European Union has come up with a temporary solution to the Greek debt crisis. But ultimately the choices are integrate -- or bust.

Matthew YglesiasMay 13, 2010
Riot police walk at the Greek parliament during an anti-government demonstration against austerity in central Athens on May 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Last week, the United States got its first genuinely good jobs report since January 2008: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an increase of 290,000 jobs in April. By the weekend, however, the economic forecast was once again cloudy, this time due to renewed concern over Greek debts. On Sunday evening came news that key European politicians and central bankers had ended over a year of inadequate action and finally come up with a two-pronged solution to the crisis. Large loans would be granted to ailing countries at favorable interest rates, and central banks would take coordinated action to buy European government bonds.

Squaring the Circle in Afghanistan

Is the next major offensive in Kandahar a misguided application of counterinsurgency?

Matthew YglesiasApr 27, 2010
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The war in Afghanistan isn't a major front in partisan political struggles, so it's substantially slipped off the radar. But the U.S. military is already in the early phases of what will soon (exactly how soon is secret, of course) be a major new offensive in the Taliban stronghold province of Kandahar, and most indications are that it's going to go badly. The problems with the planned operation are in some respects complicated, but they mostly boil down to the fact that the best evidence available -- like an Army-commissioned poll reported on by Wired's Nathan Hodge on April 16 -- indicates that the local population wants nothing to do with it.

Collateral Damage Denialism

Why do we keep on acting like a kinder, gentler form of warfare is even possible?

Matthew YglesiasApr 15, 2010
(Wikileaks)

Early this week, downtown Washington, D.C., played host to a nuclear-security summit that occasioned a lot of frustrating road closures for those of us who live here. On the stretch of New York Avenue right by my office, National Guard vehicles would sporadically move in to block traffic from entering the street, the better to facilitate the passage of motorcades. And Monday evening, one such multi-ton truck hit and killed Constance Holden, a 68-year-old Science magazine correspondent, as she was riding her bicycle.

House of Pain

Hasty decision making, capricious sartorial choices, and far too many members -- the House of Representatives is everything wrong with American politics.

Matthew YglesiasApr 01, 2010
House Budget Committee member Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)

Confused? Check the publication date, and read this.

Yesterday, thanks to the magic of Twitter, I was alerted to the existence of the Rosa DeLauro is a Fucking Hipster Tumblr, and all I could think was, “Thank God for the United States Senate.” Now there is a legislative body where everybody dresses in a staid manner, as the good lord intended legislators to dress. And they don’t only look boring; they actually are boring, barely ever passing any kind of legislation whatsoever.

Breaking Unhealthy Habits

Once Democrats stopped arguing about health and started getting real on passing reform, voters got behind them.

Matthew YglesiasMar 18, 2010

Like a specter, the unpopularity of Congress' reform proposals haunted the ultimate goal of universal health care all winter long. This issue weighed heavily on the minds of Democratic senators as they moved toward a final pre-Christmas vote on their version of reform; it became explosive after Scott Brown's unexpected win in the Massachusetts special election. Brown's victory needn't have been a devastating blow to reform—there's always been a clear legislative path forward—but the message it sent to Congress, rightly or wrongly, was that the bad poll numbers associated with health care could have real consequences on Election Day. And that's made a big difference ever since.

Pages