Robert Reich

President Obama says he wants to “rebalance” the economic relationship between China and the U.S. as part of his plan to restart the American jobs machine. “We cannot go back,” he said in September, “to an era where the Chinese … just are selling everything to us, we’re taking out a bunch of credit-card debt […]

The administration’s biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how terrible the employment situation would become by fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus — settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn’t go nearly far enough. Obama has to return to Congress, seeking a larger […]

And now there are five — five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called talent, and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn’t know then that they were too big to fail and […]

At a conference in London, a Goldman Sachs international adviser, Brian Griffiths, praised inequality. As his company was putting aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009 — up 46 percent from a year earlier — Griffiths told us not to worry. “We have to tolerate the inequality as […]

The health-insurance industry has finally revealed itself for what it is. Background: The industry hates the idea that’s emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don’t buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy — […]

On Friday, Denmark’s climate and energy minister, Connie Hedegaard, who will be chairing U.N.-sponsored climate talks in December in Copenhagen, said President Obama needs to do more on climate. “It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a […]

President Obama‘s only real diplomatic accomplishment so far has been to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy from unilateral bullying to multilateral listening and cooperating. That’s important, to be sure, but not nearly enough. The Prize is really more of Booby Prize for Obama’s predecessor. Had the world not suffered eight years […]

The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote Tuesday on a health-care bill that just got a seal of approval from the Congressional Budget Office and is very likely to garner the vote of Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe — a twofer that gives the bill preeminence over four other health-care bills that have emerged from […]

In his Saturday radio address, President Obama acknowledged the White House is exploring “additional options to promote job creation.” It’s about time. This is the worst job market in 70 years — including the longest duration of steep job losses. If anyone had any doubt that something far more dramatic must be done, listen to […]