Ezra Klein

By Dylan Matthews TAP‘s Tim Fernholz has an outstanding profile of former IMF economist and administration critic Simon Johnson today. You should really read the whole thing, but this in particular is a critical point: Unfortunately, Johnson posits, the economic specialty that deals with business cycles and recessions — short-run macroeconomics — hasn’t yet acquired […]

By Dylan Matthews You know, I usually love it when Hari Sevugan goes off on somebody, but sometimes you just feel bad for whoever the victim du jour is (via Ben Smith).

By Dylan Matthews Even given what we already know about the Bush administration’s distortions about a supposed link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and what we already know about its torture policy, this, via Matt Duss, is absolutely appalling: A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense […]

By Dylan Matthews Jon Corzine’s situation poses some pretty interesting dilemmas for the party’s campaign committees during the 2010 cycle. To recap: New Jersey is a solidly Democratic state, and Corzine has been elected statewide twice, the more recent time by a pretty comfortable margin, but he’s currently seven points behind his likely opponent, former […]

By Dylan Matthews Though clear in expressing support for Obama’s release of the torture memos, David Ignatius’ latest column involves a lot of handwringing about the decision’s negative effect on morale within the CIA. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable concern; like Ignatius, I think the disclosure would be worth it anyway, but it’s not […]

By Dylan Matthews It appears Fidel feels left out: Fidel Castro says President Barack Obama “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s remarks regarding the United States and bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on remittances from abroad as a goodwill gesture to the U.S. Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind […]

By Dylan Matthews Conor Friedersdorf had a good post on torture the other day which included this interesting tangent on the issue of whether al-Qaeda (or Islamic militancy more generally) constitutes an “existential threat” to the United States: Perhaps the term “existential threat” obscures more than it clarifies. I’d have said, immediately after the September […]

By Dylan Matthews This wouldn’t be Ezra’s blog without health care wonkery, so I figured I’d note this interesting proposal by Uwe Reinhardt, flagged by Jon Cohn. Reinhardt suggests that, instead of running a new public plan like Medicare, or trying to limit its advantages in an attempt create a level playing field with private […]

By Dylan Matthews For those of us with a weird obsession with knowing who contenders are for various Deputy Assistant Secretary of State posts or senior directorships on the NSC, Laura Rozen’s The Cable has been like crack ever since it launched in January. However, as the administration has filled up, the wonk gossip has […]

By Dylan Matthews First off, thanks to Ezra for having me over again. It’s always a treat hanging out with you guys. So former ambassador to Venezuela/Assistant Secretary of State/chief Bush administration filibuster Otto Reich isn’t pleased about Obama’s Latin America policy. And when writers at The Corner find a foreign policy approach they disagree […]