Ezra Klein

Brian Gratzer’s article on Tom Daschle says some very smart things, and some very misleading ones. In particular, he’s part of the emergent effort to distort the role and vision of Daschle’s Federal Health Board: How to get better value? Daschle et al. look across the Atlantic: They like, for example, the United Kingdom’s National […]

I’m not a big Naomi Klein fan. Nor am I a big Naomi Klein hater. As far as I can tell, her thesis is fairly banal: Political movements use moments of crisis in order to implement long-desired reforms. This has long been understood to apply to the Left, with the New Deal and the Great […]

Tomorrow: Does America’s Health Care Sector Produce More Health? POLICY FORUM Friday, December 5, 2008 12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow) Featuring Glen Whitman, Associate Professor of Economics, California State University-Northridge; Ezra Klein, Associate editor, The American Prospect; Moderator Michael F. Cannon, Cato Institute The Cato Institute 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001 tv Watch […]

I like Beau Biden and have no problem with him filling his father’s Senate seat, but I don’t think his past service as Delaware’s attorney general really erases the dynastic stain. It’s not like he ran for attorney general then married into the Biden family. Rather, his political history shows that this won’t be the […]

From Playbook: Citigroup’s top executives, and Robert Rubin, a director and senior adviser, are ready to forgo their bonuses this year amid growing internal and external pressure to atone for the company’s huge losses and a $300bn government bail-out. A person close to Mr Rubin, a former US Treasury secretary, said he had told the […]

• Roger Lowenstein on the failure of the bond-rating agencies. One of the three essential articles for understanding the financial crisis. • US diluted loan rules right before crash. • Are cows worse than cars? • Birthright’s hidden costs.

Earlier today, I noticed Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias going back-and-forth on the inadequacy of the term “soft power.” I vaguely remembered having written something on this at some point in the past, but didn’t follow it up. Steve Benen, happily, has a better memory than I, and digs up this post where you all […]

Related to the last post, here’s a question that’s been bugging me: One of the key protections that failed was the bond rating agencies. Individual investors or managers knew little about the underlying assets. They knew the rating. And the ratings were wrong. As Roger Lowenstein writes: You have to think about all that determines […]

“The housing bubble underlies everything, but the financial rocket science really did kick everything into another gear,” says Kevin Drum. And he’s right. My point from yesterday, however, is that the byzantine nature of the specific instruments has been deployed to bring a sort of passive voice to the crisis. We’re getting lot of “perfect […]

That’s what his people are saying. Guess well find out soon enough.