With only $110 billion remaining in the TARP bailout fund, all signs are that Tim Geithner is preparing to return to Congress seeking more bailout money. He’ll bring along the results of his bank “stress tests,” which will probably show many that big banks are still technically insolvent, along with bankruptcy scenarios for General Motors […]
Robert Reich
Robert B. Reich, a co-founder of The American Prospect, is a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, one of the books featured in the Prospect’s High School Essay Contest.
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THE BEGINNING OF WHAT END?
Are we at the beginning of the end? Mortgage interests are now so low — lowest since 1971 — that President Obama has begun urging Americans to refinance their homes so they can save money and start spending again. National Economics Council head Larry Summers says the country is likely to see positive economic signs […]
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WHY CUT SERVICES AND RAISE TAXES?
With the real economy continuing to shrink, and unemployment now claiming almost one out of six American workers, the economy will almost surely be more than $1 trillion short of its capacity this year, and another $1 trillion short next year. That means the $787 billion stimulus package covering 2009 and 2010 won’t nearly do […]
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WHY YOU SHOULD WORK AT A HEDGE FUND.
Just because I lost a big chunk of my total retirement savings over the last year doesn’t mean I should be upset that 25 hedge fund managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion during the same interval, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha Magazine. I do admit to being irked that these guys are taxed at […]
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IT’S A DEPRESSION.
The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who’d rather […]
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My Recovery Prediction
Just as the economy faltered, so it will recover. There’s a reason it’s called the “business cycle.”
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IN THE WAKE OF AIG.
AIG is rapidly becoming a nightmarish metaphor for the Obama‘s problems administering the bailout of Wall Street. One central problem is the lack of transparency. According to some news reports, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knew weeks ago that AIG was planning to issue the bonuses to executives in its notorious credit default swap unit, and […]
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THE REAL SCANDAL OF AIG
The real scandal of AIG isn’t just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail — the most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of capitalism — nor even that AIG’s notoriously failing […]
Posted inEducation in America
OBAMANOMICS: CONSERVATIVE OR REVOLUTIONARY?
There are two ways to see Obamanomics. The first, much preferred by the White House, is as a set of initiatives so modest as to hardly merit a raised eyebrow. Assuming the economy recovers next year, Obama’s budget projects that government spending by the end of the decade will drop to around 22.5 percent of […]
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WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STOCK MARKET MELTDOWN?
Is Obama responsible for the meltdown of the Dow? The consistently wrong-headed Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page says so, as does Fox News, CNN’s reliably demagogic Lou Dobbs, and now CNBC (where, full disclosure, I frequently appear as a token liberal). CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who bloviates nightly about stock picks, says Obama is pushing a […]
