Ezra Klein

Okay, he didn’t say that. But it would have been cool if he did, right? And he’s certainly the most likely of the administration’s officials accidentally revert to 1337 speak. What he did say, on a conference call a few minutes ago, is that “we are very pleased that the House and Senate budget committees […]

Felix Salmon, James Kwak, Brad DeLong, and Mark Thoma had a group chat about the Geithner plan last night which is worth a read. During it, James Kwak asked, “What do you think is the benefit of using private sector as opposed to just the government. The amount of $ is small. Is it the […]

There are two things that will not be in Senate Budget Chair Kent Conrad’s budget draft: Actual money for health care and the instructions that could activate the reconciliation process. Another way of saying that is that Kent Conrad has deleted all of the specifics from the health reform portion of the budget. So why […]

Without getting too far into the particulars of Amanda’s argument about Ross Douthat, I’d suggest that Brad DeLong’s lament that his post on Ross Douthat and sex got more comments than his post on the Treasury Plan is fundamentally misguided: The number of comments a post gets is not, in any way, analogous to the […]

I’ve danced around this point a bit, but a friend made an observation to me last night that I found fairly clarifying. I’m paraphrasing from conversation, but the problem with assessing the bailout plans, he said, is that this really is very complicated, and the only people who understand it have substantial Wall Street experience. […]

Joe Stiglitz is pretty hard on Geithner’s plan here, calling it nothing short of “robbery of the American people.” I think that may be going a bit far: The robbery came when Wall Street made countless bad bets that the taxpayer now needs to cover. The losses that Stiglitz fears will apportion to the taxpayer […]

For some time, Specter was the sole Republican supporting card check in the Senate. Now, facing a primary challenge from Pat Toomey and a lot of corporate money and pressure, he’s folded. Hot Air reports: According to Americans for Tax Reform, Senator Arlen Specter has committed to voting against cloture and passage of the Employee […]

James Surowiecki’s argument that the structure — and thus the incentives — embedded in the Geithner plan are exactly analogous to the FDIC’s guarantee of loans since the 1930s is definitely an interesting, ad even comforting, way of thinking about the Treasury plan, but I’m not sure I totally buy it. For one thing, the […]

The media coup of the year and the issue that best symbolized Harvey’s theories on how government should work, centered on the mundane subject of dog feces. Survey after survey showed that sidewalk dog droppings were San Franciscans’ biggest complaint about city life. Mile, therefore, sponsored a bill requiring dog owners to clean up after […]

Kevin Drum thinks it through: Three things, at least: (1) you have to figure out a widely acceptable way to value the toxic assets on bank balance sheets, (2) you have to set up a fair and consistent test for evaluating bank solvency based on those values, and (3) you need to make sure you […]