Dean Baker's Blog, page 451

The Washington Post Doesn't Have Access to Data on the Labor Market or Government Finances

That is what readers of its lead editorial demanding that President Obama move to the right will undoubtedly conclude. After all, it begins by telling readers:

"THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE for the next president will be putting the nation’s long-term finances on sounder footing. The failure to do so is the biggest shortcoming of President Obama’s first term [capitalization in original]."

After all, people who had access to data on the labor market would have to believe that the fact that tens of mi...

NYT Fluff Piece on Clinton and His Philanthropy

Newspapers are not supposed to do fluff pieces, that is the job of PR departments. Apparently the NYT does not know this, hence the fluff piece on former President Bill Clinton and the various charitable organizations that he has established since leaving the presidency. A serious news piece would have included some discussion of the TRIPS agreement that he inserted into the Uruguay Round of the WTO.

This agreement, which was inserted at the urging of Pfizer and other drug companies, required...

NYT Fluff Piece on Clinton and His Philanthropiy

Newspapers are not supposed to do fluff pieces, that is the job of PR departments. Apparently the NYT does not know this, hence the fluff piece on former President Bill Clinton and the various charitable organizations that he has established since leaving the presidency. A serious news piece would have included some discussion of the TRIPS agreement that he inserted into the Uruguay Round of the WTO.

This agreement, which was inserted at the urging of Pfizer and other drug companies, required...

The Socialist in the White House: Richard Nixon

Eduardo Porter has an interesting piece pointing out that in many respects Richard Nixon's economic policy was well to the left of Barack Obama's (no doubt attributable to his Kenyan socialist background). Clearly the center of economic debate has moved well to the right.

Porter attributes much of this shift to the rise of global competition. Increased international competition can help to explain the desire to push down wages of ordinary workers, but it doesn't explain why corporations have...

Millions or Billions? Hey, It's the Washington Post

A Washington Post article referred to "$85million in government loans to GM and Chrysler in 2009." Oh well, no one gets everything right.

Phillip Longman Tries to Explain in Retrospect What the Rest of Us Warned About Years Ago

It's often said that in Washington an intellectual is someone who discovers what everyone else has known for two decades. Hence we get Phillip Longman's extremely confused piece in the Washington Monthly.

Ostensibly the piece is explaining how we got to a situation where tens of millions of baby boomers and Gen-Xers face retirement with almost nothing other than their Social Security and Medicare. However it detours to stop almost everywhere along the way, starting with the end of the baby b...

Roger Cohen Missed the Housing Bubble

Yes, it's hard to those who write for major news outlets to notice an $8 trillion housing bubble. This is the story of the downturn and the current "fiscal woes." It would be nice if he could do a little homework before writing a column like this one. In reality, the U.S. has no fiscal woes right now (the interest rate remains near post-war lows), we just have inadequate demand.

David Brooks Tells Us That His Populist Agenda Won't Appeal to Moderates (or People Like Him)

David Brooks tells us that Obama has three choices for "big ideas." (Too bad he could only think of three, but that's another matter.) Anyhow, his choice number 2, fixing a broken capitalism, sounds pretty good. The basic point is that the gains from growth have been going primarily to the richest 1 percent and that this could be reversed. (Why this can't be merged with his idea number 1, slowing global warming, is a mystery to me.)

Anyhow, the idea seems solid, but the solutions are Brooksia...

Grading Robert Samuelson's Grading of Obama

Robert Samuelson gives President Obama a low grade for his economic performance following his initial six months in office (so do I). Let's examine the basis for his assessment.

His main complaint is that Obama pushed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through Congress. Samuelson complained that this distracted the president from focusing on the economy and created uncertainty. Let's start with the first complaint.

What does it mean to say that the ACA distracted President Obama from the economy?...

"Are Americans Better Off Today Than They Were Four Years Ago?" The Question That Exposes Incompetent Reporters

While the source is not clear, someone developed a simple way to identify incompetent news reporters. If you hear a reporter ask people in President Obama's administration, ideally in a belligerent tone, "are the American people better off than they were four years ago?,"the reporter is trying to tell you that they are not qualified to do their job.

The reason we know that the questioners are incompetent reporters is that this is a pointless question. Suppose your house is on fire and the fir...