This evening at 7pm ET:There's been a lot of moralizing about the holdout strategies of Lieberman and Nelson, but under some game-theoretic accounts it is a blessing in disguise, a blessing for Obama at least. For instance Rahm Emanuel can now say to the House: "look, we just can't renegotiate this any more or [...]
1) Mark Thoma: "President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits":
What is the cause of large and continuing budget deficits? The Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic downturn explain "explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years." Notice the tiny [...]
"a new fight [...]
I opened the PDF and failed to comprehend. This summary may be making some sense of it all:
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations ...
Breaking [...]
The White House said Friday that U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Jacob Zuma reached a "meaningful agreement" for combating climate change. The deal was described by an administration official as "not sufficient to combat the threat of climate [...]
President Barack Obama said "time is running out" to salvage a deal to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases at a global summit here, as he and China's Premier Wen Jiabao "made progress" in a private meeting.
But President Obama warned that the U.S. is prepared to walk away from the talks [...]
The political buzz today is all about the President’s falling approval ratings. He has now fallen faster than President Bush did (prior to 09/11).
The simple solution for the White House: Stop jerking around with Financial Reform. When there is high unemployment, people don’t want to see bailed out bankers [...]
I listened to Intelligence Squared* while the kids played on a parking lot snow mountain. The topic was “Are Obama’s Economic Policies Working Effectively?” The format of the show is a 2 team, 6 person (position statement) debate.
On the pro-Obama side were a current administration official, a former [...]
It would be a graduated [...]
1) Paul Krugman: Would cutting the minimum wage raise employment?:
Serious People (and Fox News) are rallying around the idea that if Obama really wants to create jobs, he should cut the minimum wage.... [R]educing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually [...]
Jon Stewart's take on the bank CEOs missing the meeting with President Obama ...As you know, I agree:
The Monkey Cage: What We Have Learned from the Health Care Debate: [R[]eporters start in with “news analysis” like this silliness from John Broder in Sunday’s New York Times. Here, climate change is framed around what Obama can or cannot accomplish, complete with portentous [...]
Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood were making fun of New York bank executives’ recent [...]
President Obama thinks insulation is sexy stuff. It saves money. But it also costs at least $23 billion dollars. And that's already on top of “Cash for Clunkers” which cost at least $3 billion dollars, though no one knows for sure."We Need a Housing Bubble" Krugman got a Nobel in Economics. "Let's Ramp Up a Murderous, Useless War" Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. So what do we give Helicopter Ben Bernanke, who has squandered much of whatever capital we had left after the housing bubble burst by pushing [...]
A Dr. Joel Harrison takes aim at Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey’s reasons for rejecting Obamacare. (HT Kristi Kendall) Dr. Harrison’s aim is poor. Here I address one of his off-target claims, to wit:
[Mackey proposes] Repealing mandates on what insurance must cover & state laws which prevent insurance companies [...]
"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," President Obama told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. In a narrow sense, that may be true. But Obama did run for office in part to keep the unemployment rate from rising to -- [...]
FELIX SALMON quotes Barack Obama saying:
This is something I hear about from business owners and entrepreneurs across America — that despite [...]
