Justin Fox offers an elegant plea for the various participants in the nationalization debate to start making a bit more sense: Krugman, Simon Johnson and a lot of other people think the government should be moving a lot more quickly and decisively to take over the most troubled banks and clean up their balance sheets. […]
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is a former Prospect writer and current editor-in-chief at Vox. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Guardian, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Slate, and The Columbia Journalism Review. He’s been a commentator on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and more.
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ARE PROGRESSIVES READING FROM RUMSFELD’S PLAYBOOK?
There’s something to Alex Massie’s shot at me here: Progressives sure seem a lot less enthused by Europe’s contrariness on stimulus than they did when Europe was resisting the Iraq War. “Once upon a time – and not so long ago neither – Democrats thought it was important for friends to speak candidly to friends […]
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LET CONSUMERS BE CONSUMERS AGAIN!
It’s a shade over a week old now, but I liked Mark Bittman’s piece arguing that the word “organic” has become increasingly misleading. There’s mounting evidence that consumers think organic means all sorts of things — healthy, local, sustainable, safe — that have nothing to do with the label. An organic Oreo, sadly, is still […]
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DOCUMENT DUMP: YOU KNOW WHAT SUCKS? HEALTH CARE.
“The Costs of Inaction” paper released by the White House is sort of a retread of arguments you’ve heard before: Absent reform, health care costs will continue to grow, the ranks of the uninsured will continue to swell, the toll of chronic conditions will continue to worsen, and things will generally be quite crappy. The […]
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A PRETTY GOOD EXPLANATION OF TWITTER.
Current offers a (cartoon) guide for the perplexed. (Via Mark Bittman’s Twitter feed, of course.)
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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE BANKING CRISIS.
Simon Johnson’s piece in the upcoming Atlantic is one of those must-ready things bloggers occasionally go on about. But it’s not a fun must-read. It’s more of a depressing must-read. Sort of like watching Hotel Rwanda. The central thesis is that America’s financial crisis is as much a problem of political power as of economics. […]
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ANGELA MERKEL EXPLAINS WHY GERMANY WON’T COOPERATE ON STIMULUS.
The New York Times scored a useful interview where German Chancellor Angela Merkel lays out her opposition to increased stimulus spending at greater length. In America, the consensus has been that Germans are simply irrationally afraid of inflationary pressures — that their resistance to amping up their stimulus package is the product of post-traumatic stress […]
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THE AUTO BAILOUT.
Jon Cohn has the details on the Obama administration’s auto bailout. This post details the underlying thinking and this one gets into the specifics (the short version seems to be that they’re trying to save GM but largely throwing Chrysler overboard).
Posted inEducation in America
WILL HEALTH REFORM, CAP AND TRADE, AND EDUCATION ALL HAPPEN IN ONE BILL?
One more tidbit from Senator Conrad’s conference call. According to Conrad, the reconciliation process is structured such that if you included instructions on more than one priority — say, both cap and trade and health reform, or cap and trade and health reform and education — “you’d have to write the legislation as one bill.” […]
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KENT CONRAD: RECONCILIATION IS NOT OFF THE TABLE.
Speaking of Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and the reconciliation process, I was just on a conference call with Conrad where he was notably unwilling to disavow the need for a 50-vote process. Asked by a reporter whether Senate Democrats would just adopt reconciliation instructions from House Democrats — more on that strategy here — […]
