Political Economy

From Politico’s Ben Smith, quoting a healthcare insider: We WIN… Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor. Forget about the politicians. This statements speaks more loudly…

That is the question Newsweek asked of the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts in charge of banking reform efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives in an interview.  Rather than answer the question fairly, Frank attacked the…

This quote from President Obama comes via Brad DeLong: We've got a long- term structural deficit that is primarily being driven by health care costs, and our long-term entitlement programs. All right? So that's the baseline. Now, if…

Remember when the war in Afghanistan began 8 years ago?  I remember reading sarcastic cartoons on a site by David Rees called “Get Your War On.” Here are the first entries: Certainly something to think about given the announcement…

The Financial Times reports that British regulators have now opened up to reveal more of the details surrounding the emergency aid banks received during the most acute periods of stress to date in the financial crisis.  Meanwhile, in…

Two weeks ago as the Financial Reform Bill was wending its way through Congress, Paul Kanjorski emerged as the champion of breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions.  After seeing trillions of dollars in taxpayer money go to…

In this post: A few thoughts about the limitations of government Our founding fathers How large should government be? How policy helps frame the debate Where we are headed In a recent post, “Stop the madness now!” I voiced…

This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today. A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to…

This comes via Gallup: The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency.…

I have written extensively about how I believe the bank bailouts were the worst of all possible solutions – fixes that perpetuate too big to fail, moral hazard and crony capitalism.  That ship has sailed, but the questions still linger…