Daily digest – No room for vacancies

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

Obama’s New Square Deal (WaPo)
EJ Dionne notes that after trying out the peacemaking centrist thing and seeing how well that goes, President Obama has decided to stake his reelection on big progressive ideas.

Europe’s Deal: So Who Wins? (TAP)
Robert Kuttner argues that the terms of the deal between Germany, France, and the ECB are bad news for the economy, Merkel and Sarkozy’s governments, and the viability of the euro, but as usual, the financial industry has made out swimmingly.

White House Pushes Vote on Consumer Agency Chief (NYT)
President Obama wants Richard Cordray confirmed to head the CFPB, but Republicans would rather destroy the agency. The White House is considering other ways to round up votes, like telling them it’s a Kenneth the Page lookalike contest.

Occupy Wall Street on Your Street (The Nation)
Astra Taylor reports on Occupy’s national day of action on foreclosures, which saw protesters advancing the newfangled idea that homes are made for people to live in, not for banks to collect like hunting trophies.

Bank of America spooked by Occupy campaign (Salon)
A leaked internal e-mail from BofA shows that the industry is taking Occupy Our Homes and its potential impact very seriously, though a spokesperson claims it’s totally normal for bank operatives to break into a flop sweat around protesters.

Crocodile Tears From the Credit Card Industry (MoJo)
Credit card companies are terribly sorry about forcing merchants to pay higher minimum fees on debit card transactions to make up for Dodd-Frank’s caps, but what else can they do? Give up their abusive monopoly powers? Let’s be reasonable here.

More on Labor Force Dropouts (NYT)
Catherine Rampell finds that the uptick in women dropping out of the labor force probably comes from those who have been laid off and lost hope. What could have made them so cynical, aside from persistent 8+ percent unemployment?

House Passes Bill To Grant Congress Veto Power Over White House Rules (HuffPo)
House Republicans are pushing new legislation that would allow the majority party in either chamber of Congress to fight the scourge of latte-sipping regulators destroying the economy with their iPads. (The joke is that someone really said this.)

Experts struggle to express direness of infrastructure problem to a wary public (WaPo)
Despite efforts to raise awareness about America’s need for infrastructure spending, the public remains skeptical about potential waste. Meanwhile, that metallic groaning sound is probably just the invisible hand of the market holding the bridge up.

What Government Aid? (Baseline Scenario)
James Kwak looks to Suzanne Mettler’s The Submerged State to explain why so many of America’s Randian supermen have convinced themselves that they’re totally independent and self-reliant despite all the government benefits they receive.

Short URL: http://aworldofprogress.com/readingroom/?p=1586

Posted by New Deal 2.0 on Dec 8 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