HEALTH CARE Economic Crisis Demands Health Care Reform The economic crisis has led some analysts to suggest that now is not the time for comprehensive health care reform. They argue that rising economic instability, burgeoning budget deficits, and other national priorities should push health care reform to the back-burner. But policy makers who ignore the [...]
Archive for November, 2008
25 Nov
In Any Guise, Podesta a Smooth Master of the Transition Game
By Lois Romano Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page C01 To fully understand how John Podesta is managing the complex Democratic takeover of the federal government, you have to be familiar with Skippy, the evil twin. Anyone who has worked for Podesta in the past decade knows Skippy, who first appeared during [...]
25 Nov
We are all Keynesians now
November 25, 2008 SOME MEMBERS of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team, introduced yesterday, counseled against too much pump-priming by government when they worked in the Clinton administration or the financial markets. Happily, the group is also pragmatic enough to recognize when deficit-avoidance is impossible and the pendulum of deregulation has swung too far. On Saturday, [...]
25 Nov
Obama’s Brain Trust
By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A15 President-elect Barack Obama has now made three things clear about his plans to bring the economy back: He wants his actions to be big and bold. He sees economic recovery as intimately linked with economic and social reform. And he is bringing in a [...]
25 Nov
For New Transportation Secretary, a Hard Road Ahead
By Lyndsey Layton Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A02 The next transportation secretary will walk into an agency that oversees an outdated air traffic control system; congested roads, rails and skies; crumbling highways and bridges; and a financing system teetering on collapse. Transportation experts, both parties in Congress and the current [...]
25 Nov
A Market-Oriented Economic Team
Advisers Will Be Expected to Guide Implementation of Stimulus and Tightened Regulation President-elect Barack Obama introduces his administration’s economic team in Chicago yesterday. The team will include, from left, Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Christina Romer as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and second from right, Lawrence Summers as director of the [...]
25 Nov
Zombie Economics: Don’t Bail out the System that Gave Us SUVs and Strip Malls
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com. Posted November 25, 2008. Why squander our remaining resources on a lifestyle that doesn’t have a future? Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it’s hardly reassuring to know that it’s been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the U.S. Treasury has become and sucked [...]
24 Nov
Don’t Bail Out the Big Three
Cato Institute by Daniel J. Ikenson This article appeared in The American on November 21, 2008. One day before the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler told the Senate Banking Committee that their industry faced imminent collapse without an emergency infusion of $25 billion, a new automobile assembly plant opened for business in Greensburg, [...]
24 Nov
Clues Obama Won’t Govern Center-Right
By Robert Creamer November 24th, 2008 Submitted by OurFuture.org Staff Should progressives beware? Has Barack Obama suckered them into supporting a President who will really govern from the “center-right”? The short answer is no. Since November 4th there has been growing protestation from right wing intellectuals that America is really a “center-right” nation and that [...]
24 Nov
Barack Obama reveals two-year plan to create 2.5m jobs
Spending programme to target roads, schools and renewable energy Barack Obama has outlined his plan to create 2.5m jobs in his first two years in office with an ambitious spending programme on roads, schools and and renewable energy. In his weekly internet address the United States president-elect warned that the US was “facing an economic [...]
24 Nov
A New New Deal
thinkprogress.org ECONOMY A New New Deal When President-elect Barack Obama officially introduces his economic team today, he is also expected to lay out his vision for a “massive fiscal stimulus program.” While estimates of its size vary — from $300 billion to over $700 billion — the expected stimulus package is now almost certain to [...]
