Dean Baker

The Post’s fact checkers want to point out that blame for the economic crisis is bi-partisan as a jibe at President Obama. This is true, but they have the wrong story. The bubble economy dates back to the Clinton administration’s stock bubble driven boom. (Which was applauded by the Post for its budget surpluses.) Of […]

Okay, they haven’t actually questioned whether President Obama is a real American, but it wants Congress to approve trade deals (inaccurately terms “free-trade agreements”) with South Korea and Colombia to create jobs. There can be an economic argument for these bills (although the deadweight loss from increased protection for patents and copyrights probably outweighs any […]

One important aspect of the financial crisis was the willingness of the credit rating agencies to rate complex derivative instruments as investment grade, even though they were filled with junk assets. The rating agencies had a motive to do this because they are paid by the companies whose issues they rate. Since they do not […]

David Brooks tells readers that: “The U.S. has its problems, but Americans would be crazy to trade their problems with those of any other large nation.” The basis for this assertion is that it enjoyed considerably faster GDP growth since 1991 than the other major wealthy countries between 1991 and 2009. There are three main […]

It might be a good idea to devote more money to job creation (okay, it is a good idea), but there is no difference between using left over or repaid TARP money for this purpose than any other money. CBO recently revised downward its projection of the money that would be lost on the TARP […]

An NPR story referred to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), my former employer, as “labor backed.” While EPI does get about one-fifth of its funding from unions, NPR does not ordinarily identify organizations for the funding. For example, the Concord Coalition or the Peter Peterson Foundation are never identified as “Wall Street backed.” –Dean Baker

NPR told listeners tonight that 2009 was much better than had been expected. Not on this planet. In fact, by most measures, most importantly unemployment, 2009 has been far worse than was even predicted well into the year. The Congressional Budget Office predicted in January of 2009 that unemployment for the year would average just […]

Robert Samuelson has another piece complaining about how much we spent on health care costs. Of course he is right, but the problem is not that patients are getting too much care, it is that they are paying way too much for the care they get. If our political system is too corrupt to allow […]

In his column today, Paul Krugman notes that the measures needed to limit the damage from global warming are projected to slow the annual growth rate over coming decades by approximately 0.05 percentage points. As Krugman correctly points out, this impact will be virtually imperceptible and there are good reasons for believing that the growth […]