While we deliberate major economic transformation, there are good ideas waiting on the shelf right now the new president can green light.
Barack Obama has said that there can only be one president at a time. By all appearances, in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic meltdown, it is he.
Obama gave three press conferences this week, aimed at reassuring a jittery nation — and world — that he was preparing to tackle the recession head-on. Even as Bush’s Treasury Department announced an array of new interventions to prop up the moribund economy, Bush himself has been out of sight and out of mind. On Tuesday, while Obama was calling for a massive spending program to boost slacking demand for everything from houses to cars to consumer gadgets, Bush was in Kentucky, “thanking” troops returning from his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush hasn’t held a full presser since August. Read the rest of this entry »
This week on NOW on PBS, economist Robert Kuttner states what should be (but unfortunately isn’t) conventional wisdom: that it’s more important to get this economy going again than it is to manage the federal budget deficit downwards.
As Kuttner points out, our national debt is currently around 40% of GDP, less than a third of 125% of GDP after World War II — and the economy did pretty well after WWII. To address today’s economic crisis, Kuttner recommends a huge stimulus plan to rebuild our antiquated infrastructure and to jumpstart our new energy economy, even if that means increasing our national debt to 60% or more of GDP.
The full video of David Broncaccio’s interview of Robert Kuttner is available on NOW’s website.
“Understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost: it comes from me.”
At his third economic-related press conference in as many days, Barack Obama announced the creation of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, modeled on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Eisenhower to “provide rigorous analysis and vigorous oversight of our intelligence community by individuals outside of government — individuals who would be candid and unsparing in their assessment.” He introduced former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker as the chairman of the panel, and University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee as its staff director and chief economist.
During the Q&A, CNN’s Ed Henry asked if there were enough new faces on his team to fulfill Obama’s pledge to bring change to Washington. The president-elect first noted it would be even more jarring if his team didn’t include officials with experience from the Clinton administration.
“It would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration because that would mean the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever. And I suspect you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council … who had no experience whatsoever … What I don’t want to do is to somehow suggest that because you served in the last Democratic administration that you’re somehow barred from serving again — because we need people are going to be able to hit the ground running.” Read the rest of this entry »
Unemployment is soaring and it may be March before we feel the first dollar of an Obama recovery plan.
WASHINGTON — There will be no freedom from want. The only thing we might now hope for is freedom from fear. Even that is a distant state of mind.
It is not just the wild fluctuations in the stock market, the water-cooler jokes about retirement accounts that are now 201(k)s. It is the incomprehensible dithering of our current president through his lame-duck period, his bizarre refusal to give approval to any economic package that aided anyone or anything that is not a big bank or a Wall Street financial institution.
Barack Obama’s appointment yesterday of former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker to the growing team advising him on the nation’s deepening financial crisis only heightens a central leadership challenge the president-elect will face: how to manage a stable packed with big brains and bigger personalities — and how to make decisions when those high-powered experts disagree.
“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, but I can’t find evidence that the saying is Chinese at all, much less that it’s ancient. One of the earliest reliable citations seems to be a 1950 short story by the British science-fiction author Eric Frank Russell, writing under the pen name Duncan H. Munro, who quotes the imprecation and then adds: “It isn’t a curse any more. It’s a blessing.”
That’s the glass-half-full way of seeing this extraordinary moment. As we celebrate Thanksgiving and enter the holiday season, it feels as if our nation is at a cusp, a brink, a verge. It’s true that if things get much more “interesting,” we might have a collective nervous breakdown. But along with the anxiety, there’s also a sense of rare opportunity — a chance to emerge better than we were economically, politically and socially.
Easy for you to say, many people would respond, and they’d have a point. I’ve been as mesmerized and freaked out as anyone watching the stock market lose nearly half its value, then recover some ground, then oscillate so wildly that a 200-point gain or loss in the Dow is the new definition of a slow day. I’ve lost money (not that I had that much in the first place), but I haven’t been wiped out the way some people have. I don’t have an adjustable-rate mortgage or a house that’s “underwater.” My employer is still in business. Read the rest of this entry »
When I started covering the White House more than 50 years ago, I believed that the smarter a president was, the better he would be. That was wrong.
Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were certainly not intellectuals, but they understood the power of the presidency and they knew how to impose their agendas on their political partners and rivals.
By contrast, Jimmy Carter was a whiz at policy analysis and Bill Clinton grasped the connections among issues almost intuitively. Yet neither of them left the White House with a record of great achievements. Read the rest of this entry »
The Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Part C and Part D plans, which began on November 15, is the time of the year when all Medicare beneficiaries may change how they receive their prescription drug and other Medicare coverage. This year the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is urging all beneficiaries to review their coverage because of the changes made by drug plans to their premiums and benefit packages. CMS encourages beneficiaries to use its Medicare Plan Finder on the Medicare website, www.medicare.gov, to help find the most comprehensive and economical coverage for them.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the admonition by CMS to review current coverage is worth heeding. More than nine in ten beneficiaries enrolled in prescription drug plans will see their premiums increase in 2009. About half of prescription drug plan enrollees who have not changed plans will have experienced a fifty percent increase in their drug plan premium since Part D began in 2006.[1] Kaiser also points out that, despite the change in plan costs each year, the majority of beneficiaries remain in the same plan rather than change during the AEP. Read the rest of this entry »
In his second news conference in as many days, President-elect Barack Obama continued his assertive approach to the nation’s financial woes, naming two more top economic officials and promoting a broad array of recovery plans he intends to push upon entering the White House in January.
Claiming a “mandate to move the country in a new direction,” Obama promised to make major cuts in the federal budget to help pay for his proposed stimulus package. He appears poised to play an increasingly high-profile role in trying to reassure consumers and the financial markets, in the process overshadowing President Bush, even though the incumbent has released more than $1.4 trillion in the past two days to spur the economy. Read the rest of this entry »
Not long ago, the men and women minding the federal budget were pure number crunchers. But in choosing Peter R. Orszag to run the Office of Management and Budget, President-elect Barack Obama indicated yesterday that the job will have a more expansive portfolio in his administration.
Orszag will take on the traditional duties of overseeing the federal budget and weighing in on economic policy, but he will also help shape new approaches on health care, education and the environment, Obama said.
“It’s said that a nation’s budget reflects its values and its priorities,” he said. “I believe that’s true. And I know that Peter will bring to his work at the OMB a set of priorities that I and the American people share.” Read the rest of this entry »
