May 6, 2013
America’s Half-forgotten Housing Crisis
On the housing front, the good news is that the President wants Mel Watt to head the FHFA. The bad news is that, precisely because the President wants him, there is no certainty that Mel Watt will be confirmed. read more »
May 2, 2013
Gridlock in Washington: Conservative Heaven!
Commentary on recent developments in American politics, written for a British audience read more »
April 19, 2013
The Forgotten Jobs Crisis
Perhaps it is the sheer size of this country that makes important problems invisible – with each problem so localized and personal as not to count in public discourse. Or perhaps it is the sheer size of the problems themselves that enables them to hide in the open –with each so large and so ubiquitous. . . read more »
February 13, 2013
Cataloging Weaknesses in the State of the Union Address
So, the State of the Union is strong, is it? Well, maybe it is for the people the President chose to speak about last night. But what about the ones he only mentioned in passing, or the ones that he omitted to mention at all? What about the state of the union for those. . . read more »
October 17, 2012
The Second Debate: In Pursuit of Women Voters
(co-authored with Eileen Coates: National Board Certified Public School Teacher) One of the most telling questions in the second of the debates between the presidential candidates focused on the gender pay gap: asking in what ways the candidates would “rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females only making 72 percent of what. . . read more »
October 15, 2012
Memo to the Presidential Candidates: Cut the Warfare State, Not the Welfare State
If you listen only to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, you could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is not simply in need of strong interventionist leadership abroad. It is also short of military hardware and troops. read more »
September 5, 2012
The Romney Pitch – Melissa Harris-Perry MSNBC
I was privileged to join Melissa Harris-Perry and her other guests in the New York studios of MSNBC on the Saturday morning after the Republican convention in Tampa. Melissa was keen to explore with us why so many of the statements made by leading Republicans at the convention failed to pass the ‘fact-checker’ test. She. . . read more »
August 10, 2012
Why Promising to Save the Middle Class May Just Not Be Enough!
This is the lull before the storm, the final moments within which to settle the character of the presidential campaign of 2012. Even in the lull, however, the likely lines-of-march are already clear – lines that, if unaltered, should give far more comfort to conservatives than they do right now to progressives. read more »
July 10, 2012
The Unfinished Business of the Obama Administration: The Foreclosure Crisis
Administrations are invariably criticized for things they do right, for things they do wrong, and for things they fail to do at all. They are invariably criticized for doing too much and criticized for doing too little. Conservative critics of the current Administration tend to do the former. Liberal, by contrast, would do well. . . read more »
June 12, 2012
The Unfinished Business of the Obama Administration: Bank Reform
As the big five American banks await the downgrading of their credit ratings by Moody’s Investors Service – a downgrading that is apparently due any day now[1] – it is worth asking: after more than three years of the Obama Administration, where exactly are we on the substance of bank reform? Has it happened?. . . read more »
May 30, 2012
Olympic Lessons for an Imperial America
The Olympics loom. American eyes will turn to London, hoping for Olympic gold. As they do so, it will be worth remembering that this will be London’s second post-World War II Olympic Games, not the first, and that there are also medals to be won by comparing the condition of the U.K. on the. . . read more »
May 11, 2012
The Unfinished Business of the Obama Administration: Poverty & Unemployment
The Obama Administration has unfinished business: lots of it, actually. The President will no doubt seek re-election in November by emphasizing policy successes. He would do well, however, to seek re-election by also recognizing policy failures: recognizing them and committing his Administration to do better. To win re-election, that recognition will need to be honest. . . read more »
April 9, 2012
Taking the Republicans to Task: (4) On Health Care Reform
As we await the verdict of nine Supreme Court Justices on the constitutionality of all or part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is worth asking what the remaining Republican Presidential nominees would create in its place. We know that they would have to create something, because each is committed to the. . . read more »
March 26, 2012
The White House and Your House: Policy Inertia and Organizational Resistance in the On-going Crisis of American Housing
Ask any of the Republican presidential hopefuls in this long and drawn out primary season what in general is wrong with the economic policies of the Obama Administration, and they will each tell you that the economy is under-performing now because the current Administration intervenes in its workings too frequently and too heavily. They. . . read more »
March 8, 2012
Taking the Republicans to Task: (3) on Smaller Government, Smaller Deficits
The current frontrunners in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination vary far more in their personalities and leadership styles than they do in their problem analysis and policy prescription. Ron Paul apart, their explanation of what is going wrong in contemporary America, and what therefore needs to be done to put things. . . read more »
February 23, 2012
Taking the Republicans to Task: (2) On the Regulation of Business and Labor
In the standard trilogy of core commitments currently being made by Republican presidential candidates, the cutting of taxes and the pruning of government is invariably accompanied by the promise to deregulate business – and indeed to re-regulate labor. The Obama administration stands condemned, not simply for its tax-and-spend propensities, but also for its subordination. . . read more »
February 13, 2012
Taking the Republican Candidates to Task: (1) on Taxes
One consequence of the Republican Party’s current propensity to select its presidential nominee by the political equivalent of American Idol is that we are regularly exposed to sound-bite answers designed to differentiate one candidate from another. read more »
January 29, 2012
Republican Truth and Real Truth: GSEs and the Housing Bubble
In any wars of words in an election season, truth is often an early casualty. The war of words between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is no exception. read more »
January 17, 2012
Republican Politics and the Unemployment Conundrum
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the world discovered by Alice was one in which every aspect of reality was inverted. Big things were small. Small things grew big. The Cheshire cat faded into a grin. read more »
January 2, 2012
Time to Choose, America!
It is likely that 2012 will be long remembered as a watershed year in America politics. It certainly needs to be. read more »
December 12, 2011
Calling Progressive Economists into the Public Square
“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress” (Theodore Roosevelt, 1910)[1] Economists are the new public intellectuals of the age. read more »
November 18, 2011
Banker power trumping Democratic Power: the crisis on two continents
We live in troubled and ironic times. The times are certainly troubled. The IMF’s Managing Director has recently spoken with some justification of a looming “lost decade” for the global economy read more »
October 31, 2011
Poverty Amid Plenty – America’s Continuing Shame
The current wave of mass protest against Wall Street excess has completely reframed the public conversation in the United States. The “deficit problem” with which Washington was consumed in the first half of 2011 has not vanished from the political agenda, read more »
October 12, 2011
Trade Policy: Countering the Walmart Effect
Bipartisanship in Washington is rare these days, but it does occasionally surface. It did this week, when the Senate passed the “Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act”(S.1619) – the one sponsored by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and co-sponsored by 22 other Senators, including five Republicans.[1] read more »
October 12, 2011
David Coates on the Kathleen Dunn Show
David Coates speaks about Making the Progressive Case Towards a Stronger U.S. Economy on the Kathleen Dunn Show. Click the link above to open the media player. One the great pleasures, and indeed privileges, of being a guest on the Kathleen Dunn Show is the quality of the questions that Kathleen asks and the seriousness. . . read more »
September 28, 2011
Helping Obama Rediscover His Groove
Thus far 2011 has not been a good year for progressives. The daily sight of the White House seeking elusive accommodations with Tea Party-inspired Congressional Republicans has not been an edifying one. Prior to and during the debt ceiling crisis, all the drive, all the issue framing, all the assertiveness in the pursuit of. . . read more »
September 22, 2011
Making the Progressive Case
Making the Progressive Case - A three part video lecture read more »
September 21, 2011
David Coates on the WFMY Good Morning Show
It’s late September 2011. The debt-ceiling crisis of the summer is now behind us, and a more strident President Obama has summoned Congress to hear his call for a new stimulus package – an American Jobs Act. Everything in his list of proposals was once acceptable on both sides of the aisle. But no longer.. . . read more »
September 14, 2011
Doing Two Things at Once: Jobs and Housing as Routes Out of Recession?
Maybe it’s because of what I see every morning from my kitchen window– the view over coffee of my former neighbor’s foreclosed and rapidly deteriorating home – that the Obama Administration’s housing policy so depresses me. Or maybe what depresses me is the housing policy itself. read more »
August 29, 2011
Defending Trade Unions As Labor Day Approaches
Labor Day looms, and with it the official end of summer.[1] Labor Day – the day we celebrate the strength and importance of American labor. But in truth, on this Labor Day what will there be to celebrate – certainly not the strength and importance of American labor. Things, after all, are not good. . . read more »
August 26, 2011
Immigration Policy: August 2011 Update
Three sets of numbers frame recent developments in immigration policy: numbers of the foreign-born in the latest U.S. census data; numbers on the impact of the recession on immigrant employment; and numbers on the size and trajectory of the undocumented population. read more »
August 11, 2011
Eight Things to Tell a Republican
With Congress in recess and our lawmakers now back in their districts, there is presumably a slight chance of meeting one of them in the street. If, like me, your representative in the House is not of your political persuasion – mine, Virginia Foxx, most definitely is not – read more »
July 29, 2011
Washington Woes and the Problem of the Parrot
In the famous Monty Python parrot sketch, John Cleese’s understandable outrage at being sold a Norwegian Blue that was actually “stone dead” as he put it, does not get him a new bird. What it does get him – from the Michael Palin character who originally sold it to him – is a barrage of. . . read more »
Since 1999 I have held the Worrell chair in Anglo-American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Before that I directed the International Centre for Labour Studies, and was Professor of Government, at the University of Manchester in the UK. I live on the outskirts of Winston-Salem with my wife and teenage son. 
