The German Political Theorist Who Explains What’s Happening in Washington
Carl Schmitt, a Third Reich jurist and philosopher, saw politics as a life-and-death battle against enemies and democracy as dispensable. By Robert J. Shapiro Americans are, of course, deeply divided today over race, gender, immigration, religion, and other differences that define us as a people and political culture. These cleavages have existed throughout American history, but in their current iterations,… Continue reading
Time to Face the Facts: The Economy Probably Won’t Get…
Brace yourself for a very anxious and stormy time, economically and politically, because there’s little prospect that the U.S. economy will improve for quite some time. The latest to weigh in is the Federal Reserve, whose new private forecast sees no growth in sight for the rest of this year and slow gains at best for 2010. The Fed always…Continue reading
Is Cap-and-Trade a Dead Policy Walking?
In his February 24 speech to Congress, President Obama asked members “to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution.†So, yesterday, House Energy and Commerce chair Henry Waxman took the first step by introducing his cap-and-trade plan. Yet sometimes, the political sands shift underneath a policy approach that was once viable, even embraced broadly, and its…Continue reading
Treasury’s New Program Mixes Sound Economics and Wishful Thinking
The administration’s new program to wring the toxic assets out of the banking system is a huge bet, which, like most of the previous reforms for the current crisis, is based equally on sound economics and a good dose of wishful thinking. The truth is, it couldn’t be otherwise: We’ve never experienced this kind of crisis before, so we cannot…Continue reading
Anticipating Inflation Now Can Save Taxpayers $50-$70 Billion
The Federal Reserve yesterday announced $725 billion in new purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities to hold up housing finance, along with plans to buy $300 billion in Treasury securities. Before this latest program, the Fed was already running the most expansionary modern monetary policy since the Weimar Republic. On top of $2 trillion in guarantees for a…Continue reading
Why This is No Traditional Recession
The leaders of the Republican Party (and plenty of their followers) continue on their strange path of denying the most basic economic logic in the midst of economic crisis and opposing whatever the President says or does. Happily, the Obama administration knows economics, and they seem to generally know themselves. Yet, they may still overestimate the extent of their powers,…Continue reading
The Denial and Anger Inside GOP Economic Policy
The leaders of the Republican Party, reeling from their painful string of defeats, seem stuck in two of the classic stages of grief, denial and anger. This week, Rush Limbaugh replaced Bobby Jindal as the leading and most colorful example. Limbaugh may seem like too easy a target, since talk radio always tends towards hyperbole. Nonetheless, the essence of the…Continue reading
The Economic Logic in the President’s Speech to Congress
President Obama superb address Tuesday night had an underlying, unifying logic which some may have missed, but which hopefully readers of this will recognize. First, on the financial and economic crisis, he embraced the three basic steps we have urged since last September: On top of a stimulus aimed at long-term investments and helping the states — that’s now done…Continue reading
Where the Administration’s Plan for the Housing Crisis Could Fall…
The President today announced a plan to cut foreclosures and reboot new mortgage financings, at least when the economy shows signs of new life. The fact of offering a plan is an advance, given that Bush and his people did nothing and proposed nothing, even as the crisis reached critical mass. As we have written here since the crisis first…Continue reading