Ezra Klein

McCain’s body language was tense and confrontational, his voice tight and angry. All questions were framed in the form of a condescending dismissal and most replies were sharply interrupted. His demeanor was reminiscent of nothing so much as a lovelorn teenager’s barely controlled confrontation with their crush’s new girlfriend. It wasn’t so much a conversation […]

David Brooks’s take on the political difficulties of enforcing a real restructuring plan on Detroit is largely correct: By enmeshing the White House so deeply into G.M., Obama has increased the odds that March’s menacing threat will lead to June’s wobbly wiggle-out. The Obama administration and the Democratic Party are now completely implicated in the […]

Former Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole is introducing Kathleen Sebelius before the HELP Committee. The beginning was much as you’d expect: Kind words about the nominee and sorrowful words about the missed opportunities of the past. He vene extolled bipartisanship. But not in the manner you’d expect. “Look at the numbers,” said Dole. “Look at […]

Today, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is holding a hearing on Kathleen Sebelius’s confirmation. But not the hearing. As Senator Mike Enzi, the ranking Republican on HELP, just noted, primary jurisdiction for this nomination lies with the Finance Committee. But because the Secretary of Health and Human Services has responsibility for […]

While writing the last post, I ran across an interesting paper published by Simon Johnson, Todd Gorley, and Changyong Rhee. “Do Crises Weaken Vested Interests? The Illustrative Case of Korean Corporate Bonds,” looks at the Korean financial crisis and the mix of firms that secured access to the bond markets amidst the chaos. The authors […]

A few years ago, it would probably have seemed unlikely that in the event of a massive financial crisis befalling the country, left wing critics of a generally liberal Democratic president would rally around a former research director of the IMF. The IMF itself didn’t really have a good reputation in left wing circles. It’s […]

James Besser asks why the major Jewish groups have responded to J Street with so much more fury and fear than, say, the formation of Americans for Peace Now, or the Israeli Policy Forum. One Jewish leader, speaking off the record, confides to Besser that he feels “Israel is particularly vulnerable and isolated at this […]

I liked NASA climatologist James Hanson’s response — in the form of an explanation of an unclear quote — to this weekend’s New York Times Magazine article on heterodox scientist Freeman Dyson: You might guess (correctly) that I was referring to the fact that contrarians are not the real problem – it is the vested […]

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about the possibility of limiting the size of banks. Felix Salmon, however, is the first writer I’ve seen willing to commit to some specifics: I think that maybe $300 billion in assets would be a reasonable cap on bank size — there’s very little evidence that […]

I’m not really qualified to comment on the outcome of Obama’s Afghanistan/Pakistan policy review, but Steve Coll is, and he seems to like it.