Robert Kuttner

Last week, Obama finally got some traction with a speech that had a clear, consistent message — jobs, jobs, jobs. Even the Republicans were reluctant to oppose him frontally. Now, once again, Obama will mix his own message by emphasizing belt tightening in general and cuts in Medicare in particular. There is one silver lining: […]

President Obama’s jobs speech last Thursday evening heartened Democrats and progressives, but yesterday’s meeting of the “super-committee” reminds us how much Obama has already given away and the traps he has set for himself (and the recovery) going forward. While he tries to coax the economy into producing more jobs with one hand, Obama has […]

President Obama’s jobs speech was the right narrative and the right tone. It suggested a president who was a capable leader in a crisis, who gets America’s pain. He also boxes in the Republicans — and by offering a plan that includes elements that many Republicans support, he makes it much harder for them to […]

After a terrific speech on Labor Day in Detroit, President Obama is likely to offer fairly modest proposals tonight, adding up to a program too weak to cure a rapidly deflating economy, and a politics too weak to draw clear lines between himself and his Republican opposition. While the rhetoric may be a little hotter […]

The president we elected in November 2008 gave a terrific speech on Labor Day in Detroit. It’s been a long time coming. This president’s trademark seems to be that he doesn’t find his inner fighter until his back is to the wall (along with ours). Obama’s approval rating, at just 40 percent according to Gallup, […]

The nation’s employers added no new jobs in August, according to the Labor Department, adding pressure on President Obama to deliver a far-reaching speech next Thursday on a strategy to deal with persistent joblessness. However, all of the preliminary indicators, including White House leaks, suggest a very modest speech filled with cautious proposals that cost […]

There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that President Obama is planning to include in his eagerly anticipated post-Labor Day jobs speech a variation on a truly lame state program called Georgia Works. The program, begun in 2003, pays people on unemployment insurance a small additional stipend, currently $240, if they agree to work 24 […]

While we mourn the exit of Ron Bloom as the administration’s point man on manufacturing (who was not permitted to utter the dread words “industrial policy”), we can welcome the appointment of Alan Krueger to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. Given the administration’s penchant for naming Wall Street people to key economic posts, Krueger […]

How to address the jobs crisis? President Obama has promised a major speech after Labor Day. Bill Galston, one of the premier New Democrat intellectuals, has a piece in The New Republic, ghostwriting what he thinks the president should say. Galston is a very smart academic and a kind person, but this proposed speech epitomizes […]

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s closely watched annual speech at this morning’s session of the Fed’s Jackson Hole Conference is a good illustration of why Thomas Carlyle referred to economics as the dismal science. Chairman Bernanke was doubly dismal, not just as an economic pessimist but as a political coward. Bernanke’s assessment of the economy […]