August 9, 2010
The Poverty That Blights Us All
We face a political season in the fall that will be full of Republican calls to continue the Bush tax cuts and conservative demands to scale back government spending. Those calls are already in full cry, read more »
June 4, 2010
The Shadows of a Greek Tragedy
Throughout May 2010 the problems of Greek debt – and the danger of a Greek default – threw a dark shadow back over the US debate on the size of our public deficit. Republican lawmakers fighting their internal primary battles found themselves under attack if they had voted for TARP (Senator Robert Bennett lost his […] read more »
May 1, 2010
Chapter 3: May 2010 Update
On the TARP front, Ben Bernanke (in a April 8 speech at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress) defended the way central bankers and public policy-makers had acted since September 2008, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression and so averted an even worse calamity. ‘In the current episode,” he […] read more »
February 12, 2010
Chapter 3 – Recent Developments in 2010
The contested impact of stimulus money (on the details of which, see the 2009 story below) was politically center-stage in the first quarter of 2010. In the context of an economy with no fewer jobs in 2010 than in 2000, but with 11 million more Americans seeking them, unemployment was stubbornly high: stuck at 9.7% […] read more »
January 12, 2010
Chapter 3: The Story in 2009
2009 was dominated by first the passing and then the impact of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. That package drew a principled rejection from fiscally conservative and free-market minded conservatives, using arguments of the kind discussed in the text. It also drew criticism – as too little and too late – from the progressive wing […] read more »
January 1, 2010
Chapter 3: The Story in 2009
2009 was dominated by first the passing and then the impact of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. That package drew a principled rejection from fiscally conservative and free-market minded conservatives, using arguments of the kind discussed in the text. It also drew criticism – as too little and too late – from the progressive wing […] read more »
November 21, 2009
Chapter 3: Introduction
Bailing out the Auto Industry? Also heavily in dispute throughout 2009 was the Obama administration’s limited bailout of the US auto industry. Both Chrysler and GM briefly went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the early summer of 2009, to facilitate a restructuring the bulk of whose painful downside was borne by the companies’ workers and […] read more »
