Ezra Klein

Obama just exited a cabinet meeting and gave a couple of quick remarks on the flu. I’ve attached his remarks beneath the fold, but in particular, I thought he offered a clear discussion of why this flu strain is different than the seasonal flu strains: somebody asked, why is this different from other flus? We […]

Ed Kilgore crunches the numbers and finds that Pelosi and Reid managed to hold the caucus together pretty well: 47 House Democrats represent districts carried by John McCain in a bad Republican year. They voted 34-13 for the Obama-backed budget. 13 Democratic senators represent states carried by McCain; they voted for the budget 10-3.Of the […]

“Let’s put all this in perspective,” writes Adam Serwer. “There have been 110 Justices on the Supreme Court. Of those, two have been women, and two have been black. The other 106 have been white men. That means that around 96% of Supreme Court Justices have been white men.” The “this” that Serwer is perspectivizin’ […]

The Econ4u folks are dedicated to education Americans about all matters financial. To dramatize the importance of their mission, they put a poll into the field asking people how many millions are in a trillion. The results: Q: How many times larger is a trillion than a million? Would you say…One Thousand Times- 18%Ten Thousand […]

Some expected, but still dispiriting, news out of the Senate last night, where Dick Durbin’s “cramdown” legislation went down to defeat. The policy was simple enough: It would allow bankruptcy judges, at their discretion, to reduce the principal and interest-payments on primary mortgages. That would make it likelier that people could keep their homes. Unsurprisingly, […]

Yesterday, Christina Romer appeared before the Joint Economic Committee to give the assembled congressfolk an update on the administration’s economic thinking. So far as these documents go, it’s a pretty clear outline of the White House’s approach, and it includes an interesting bit on the interaction of Romer’s research on the Great Depression and her […]

One of the interesting threads in the Chrysler bankruptcy was Obama’s evident fury at the hedge funds and investment banks that refused the deals the government offered. The reason for their reluctance was simple enough: Bondholders don’t want to lose money. But the strategy behind their intransigence proved poor: They didn’t think the government would […]

Came across this somewhat randomly yesterday. It’s Tom Daschle giving a speech in Colorado. He was a bit more courageous on the framing of this issue than are most of the current participants. But before we define the solution, I think it’s important that we define the problem. It’s important that we’re all on the […]

You have to pity David Souter. By all accounts, he’d grown to hate his job. The Court was a grind. “An intellectual lobotomy,” he called it. He was exhausted by the ideological jockeying. Dispirited by the institution’s rightward turn. Shattered by the decision in Bush v. Gore. He loathed DC. “The world’s worst city,” he […]

I’ll be interviewing a pandemic flu expert in a couple of hours. I have my own questions, of course (“what investment opportunities does this open up for me and mine?”), but if there’s anything you’d like me to ask, leave it in comments.