Ezra Klein

“Contrary to what many parents tell their children,” wrote Robert Frank, “talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. It helps to be talented and hard-working, of course, yet some people enjoy spectacular success despite having neither attribute.” It’s not a particularly bold claim. Nor is Frank’s conclusion the sort of […]

Give it up to Slate: Their parody Facebook feed of Obama’s first 100 days is very funny. Meanwhile, in other First 100 Days commentary, Mark Schmitt is skeptical of the whole construct, but I love his conclusion: But we should take a moment to respect the miracle that these 100 days happened at all. Consider […]

I haven’t written much about the Chrysler bankruptcy because I’ve not been sure I understand it well enough t have an opinion. But this is about the clearest explanation I’ve found: What the federal government is hoping for — in it’s happiest-of-happy-thoughts scenarios — is a quick “surgical” bankruptcy of only 30-60 days with Fiat […]

Steve Pearlstein spent some time last week with Mayo Shattuck, the grinning fellow pictured above. Shattuck was a high-flying financial whiz kid who looked like a genius amidst the boom but who’s been tagged as a fool since the crash. Shattuck, of course, has all manner of perfectly reasonable explanations for his company’s poor fortunes. […]

Tom Laskawy is attending Princeton’s “Feeding a Hot and Hungry Planet” conference. Fun stuff. But he must not be that engaged because he had time to send a couple IMs that suggested a truly disturbing ability to anticipate my interests: Tom: i’m at an ag conf. at princeton listening to an official from the UN […]

The Politico reports that “Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad predicted that the budget pressures will force action on a major overhaul of the current tax system by 2010 or 2011.” You don’t often hear that, so it’s worth unpacking for a second. Len Burman, Director of the Tax Policy Center, recently released a report […]

Just ran across an interesting study. In it, Ruby Siddiqui argues that it’s cost effective to treat all symptomatic patients with antiviral medications, even given the fact that you’ll inevitably waste some courses on patients who aren’t infected. What isn’t cost-effective is to try and test each case and then administer antivirals. it’s one of […]

From his interview with David Leonhardt: I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It […]

Not really sure what to say about this. It did make me realize that one of my favorite things in life is hearing people painfully enunciate slang. Saying the word “swagga” is not the same as saying the corrupted version of the word “swagger.”

There’s a bit of a “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” approach to the swine flu occurring in some corners of the blogosphere. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Rather, we have nothing to fear but a lethal mutation of a pandemic influenza. It’s true that the flu is, as of now, not […]