Daily digest – Natural born job killers

What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates.

The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good(NYT)
David Leonhardt writes that the technological progress of the 1930s paved the way for decades of prosperity, but America must do more than develop some cool iPad apps if it hopes to make another leap forward.

Panic of the Plutocrats (NYT)
Paul Krugman argues that all the pundits, politicians, and business leaders smearing Occupy Wall Street and Elizabeth Warren for their wild-eyed radicalism are simply trying to create a distraction while they make their getaway with America’s wealth.

The Wall Street Occupiers and the Democratic Party (Robert Reich)
Democrats may welcome Occupy Wall Street’s help in shaping their election strategy, but OWS won’t get to set policy like the Tea Party. That would make the dinner conversation way too awkward at President Obama’s corporate fundraisers.

The Job Killers (MoJo)
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery make the case that the GOP doesn’t really care about reducing deficits — its goal is to drive the country so far into the red that privatization and austerity start to look like sane solutions if you squint at them.

Too Big to Fail Not Fixed, Despite Dodd-Frank (Bloomberg)
Simon Johnson warns that the only way to make Dodd-Frank’s resolution authority work would have been to shrink the banks down to a reasonable size, in which case we wouldn’t have needed a resolution authority. Oh well, better luck next crisis.

Could this time have been different? (WaPo)
Ezra Klein plays a game of shoulda woulda coulda with the Obama team, asking whether a bolder stimulus would have turned the economy and their political prospects around or if governing in this crisis was always a no-win scenario.

This time was different, and could have been more different still (The Economist)
Ryan Avent responds to Klein’s piece, noting that the biggest obstacle to recovery is the Federal Reserve’s insistence that it must remain ever vigilant in the war against inflation lest the dollar become weak enough for people to start spending it again.

From Elizabeth Warren, the proper case for liberalism (WaPo)
EJ Dionne notes that Elizabeth Warren’s observation that no one in America becomes rich alone has left the elite almost as outraged as if she had strolled up to the emperor and pointed out that he was walking around stark naked.

Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling (NYT)
It’s always darkest before the dawn, but a new study which finds that U.S. incomes fell more in the first two years of “recovery” than they did during the recession suggests we’re in more of a “dawn is canceled until further notice” scenario.

Many in Both Parties Want a Window Into the Deficit Reduction Panel’s Work (NYT)
No one is quite sure what the super committee is getting up to behind closed doors, but according to committee members, the only way they can do the people’s work is by keeping the actual people as far away from the process as possible.

Short URL: http://aworldofprogress.com/readingroom/?p=1164

Posted by New Deal 2.0 on Oct 11 2011. Filed under New Deal 2.0, the reading room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry