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The research discrediting the Reinhart-Rogoff study is upending the economic policy discussion everywhere. Everywhere, apparently, except for HBO’s new series “Vice,” which recently featured Kenneth Rogoff as an expert on austerity.
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Affluent business flyers inconvenienced by delays = national emergency that Congress immediately fixes. Cancer clinics closing = Congress does squat, goes home. This is just one more story of our corrupt times. A continuing seriesRead the full series Last week the sequester cuts kicked in at airports and caused affluent business fliers to experience some [...]
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The deficit is already down by half. The intellectual foundation for austerity turned out to be a spreadsheet error combined with cherrypicked data. In Europe austerity has brought nothing but stagnation, recession, depression and suffering. But our own “sequester” ramps up with disastrous effects — unless it affects the affluent. Deficit down by half. See: [...]
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Austerity is beginning to hit and the economy is slowing as a result. The most immediate effect is that flights are delayed, but unemployment checks are smaller and there are fewer things We the People do to make our lives and economy better — also called “government spending.” But hey, as Dean Baker writes in, [...]
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The “Grand Bargain” is about showing the world that we can hurt people, so they will know we are “serious.” Reading Jason Linkins’ HuffPo account of elite-pundit thinking about the “Grand Bargain,” Passing ‘Grand Bargain’ Voters Don’t Care About Is Critical To Confidence In Government, Apparently, I am struck by the similarity between the (elite [...]
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Today, The Week published my essay “Why Obama’s Legacy Doesn’t Need a Grand Bargain.” While austerity ideologues like Alan Simpson are insisting that President needs a “grand bargain” – swapping entitlement reform for tax reform – to have a great historical legacy, I showed that 1) “history yawns at budget deals” and 2) neither Social [...]
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The economy is not working for We, the People. But even with $4 trillion already cut from deficit projections, a deficit drop of about 50 percent as a share of gross domestic product, and Congressional Budget Office projections that the deficit is stable for the next 10 years Washington remains focused on even more economy-killing [...]
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There is no deficit problem. The deficit is down about 50 percent as a share of gross domestic product just since President Bush’s fiscal year 2009 deficit and is falling at the fastest rate since the end of World War II. Yet the Washington debate is about how and where to cut us back into [...]
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Republicans are now claiming President Obama is for big spending cuts that gut government and the things we do to make our lives better, and that Republicans are not for gutting spending. This one is almost funny, if it weren’t for the damage that will be done to people if the Republicans cause the “sequester” [...]
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After President Obama called on Congress today to postpone the deep across-the-board federal spending cuts set to kick in on March 1 in the so-called sequester, Campaign for America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage responded by declaring that the sequester “should be repealed, not postponed.” Meanwhile, the Congressional Progressive Caucus today unveiled its legislation to repeal [...]
