Conor Clarke ran into Chas Freeman on the 42 bus this morning: I introduced myself and told him I was sorry that he resigned. He recoiled only slightly when I mentioned I worked for the Atlantic, then smiled broadly. “Shit happens.” He added a little wistfully: “I wasn’t so e...

Bailed out bankers are now whining about political interference in the operation of their businesses. Kevin Drum rightly suggests that this is relevant to the debate over whether or not the government should formally take control over the most-distressed large institutions: Some things just make sen...

Revisiting Barack Obama’s education speech, this bit near the beginning touched on some interesting themes: I know there are some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time. They forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad, passed the Homestead Act, and create...

Jim Henley writes: Let me add, from my layman’s perspective, the arguments against “nationalizing the banks� seem entirely plausible, as do the arguments against declining to nationalize the banks. The only reasonable conclusion is that we’re screwed no matter what. But at bottom, it does se...

I got a chance to meet Matt Miller the other day and talk to him a bit about his neat new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas . One thing we talked about was the possibility of mobilizing class resentment among what you might call the lower upper class. As I’ve been emphasizing, if you earn over $2...

To try to clear up something about yesterday’s post on a Swiss model of health care reform I don’t, personally, consider something like that adequate. I don’t think it’s the appropriate role of progressives in the United States to be pushing for subsidies and mandates for ins...

Simon Johnson’s appearance on NPR’s “Fresh Air” is very informative on the case for nationalization of failing financial institutions, and what that would entail. He makes the point based on his IMF experience that this is what the IMF—and, indeed, the U.S. government—wou...

Ezra Klein writes that Republicans are drawing the lines of opposition to the progressive health care agenda in pretty narrow terms: Does that matter? It’s hard to say. Rhetorically, the GOP has staked out a very narrow corner of opposition. Last week, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enz...

Chad Aldeman highlights this rather striking pattern that emerges when you code US states according to whether the proportion of their adult population with a high school degree is above-average or below-average: It’s hard to see, but Rhode Island actually belongs in the “South and New Y...

I’ve been fairly critical of European approaches to macroeconomic stimulus, but some pushback I’ve received forces me to acknowledge that there are real limits to what Europe can do in this regard given the institutional set-up and the ex ante debt/GDP ratios some of the major players ar...