Ezra Klein

Apparently, White House economic adviser Jason Furman is telling Hill staffers that the administration’s cap and trade plan might raise much more than the $646 billion they’ve projected in revenues. How much more? Two to three times that.

Tom Laskawy points us to a nice op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that the government is pretty much killing people by allowing industry lobbyists to writes nutritional guidelines. T. Colin Campbell, a biochemist at Cornell University, and Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., a surgeon, write: Right now, the U.S. government’s most widely publicized dietary […]

All those GOP senators now ranting about AIG’s bonus structure? They’re the same politicians who were furiously inveighing against Obama’s earlier moves to meddle in the compensation decisions of private companies. They termed Obama’s interventions “socialism” and call it “outlandish” that the government was now “setting pay.” Suzy Khimm’s got the scoop: This week, Republican […]

That’s the scenario Brad Plumer’s heard sketched out as a last resort by various members of the administration and the environmental advocacy community. “The basic premise would be that if the United States passes a cap-and-trade bill on carbon, but other countries like China don’t do anything about their emissions, then we could slap a […]

The biggest news of the day is certainly yesterday’s announcement that the Federal Reserve is getting into the “quantitative easing” game. Unable to further lower interest rates, they’re going to pump as much as $1.15 trillion into the economy by buying government bonds and debt. This is, in essence, the government monetizing itself, and it’s […]

Yesterday, I reported that George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, had signed onto Commonwealth Fund’s vision of health reform — which included a Medicare-backed public plan. What I hadn’t know is that when he signed on, he’d also privately conveyed his skepticism about that aspect of the proposal. His press people sent along this clarification: […]

Massimo Calabresi has a biggish story today reporting that though Tim Geithner said that he only learned of the AIG bonuses on March, 10th, Federal Reserve officials has informed Treasury Department staffers of their existence on February 28th. And if that bit of inter-department backstabbing wasn’t juicy enough, Justin Fox notes that the bonuses were […]

A good summary of this Wonk Room post requires some poor grammar: We are less unable to afford reforming health care than not reforming health care. I don’t doubt the Lewin Group’s estimate that universal health care could cost about $150 billion a year, or $1.5 trillion over 10 years. And resolved: No one wants […]

I’m hoping I got the embed on this right. The clip should show Tyler Cowen debating the ethics of eating a fish with Peter Singer — and then asking whether Singer is truly a utilitarian. it’s interesting.

Another day, another anonymously sourced New York Times front page story lashing Tim Geithner.