Zcom_simple

Back Search Results - New Search

Znet Article Baker: Good Medicine?

Znet Article, July, 29 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

As part of his health care package, President Obama proposed creating an independent commission of medical experts that would determine the medical procedures for which Medicare will pay. The reason is that patients now receive many costly procedu...

Znet Article Baker: Stimulus Arithmetic

Znet Article, July, 15 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

When her husband was in the oval office Laura Bush launched an initiative to promote literacy across the country. Unfortunately, there was no comparable effort to promote numeracy in our nation's capital. This has been evident in the discussion of...

Znet Article Baker: Yes, We Can Tax Those Wall Street Bastards

Znet Article, July, 02 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Last month, when Congress failed to pass a bankruptcy reform measure that would have allowed home mortgages to be modified in bankruptcy, Senator Richard Durbin succinctly commented: "the banks own this place." That seems pretty clear.

Znet Article Baker: The Global Warming Lie Detector

Znet Article, June, 30 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The House's passage of the Waxman-Markey bill raises the possibility that the United States will finally do something on global warming. This prospect has the industry hacks screaming at top volume about the horrible fate that awaits the economy. ...

Znet Article Baker: Spreading the Wealth Around to the Insurance Industry & Friends

Znet Article, June, 23 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

This is the time when the excrement starts hitting the fan. The lobbyists are in overdrive, rounding up members of Congress just like the cowboys of the Old West would bring in the herd.

Znet Article Baker: Envisioning the Future Requires Knowing the Present

Znet Article, June, 20 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

As every backcountry hiker recognizes, you must first know where you are before you can figure out how to get to where you want to be. While it is important to know where we want to go, progressives often badly misunderstand where we are now.

Znet Article Baker: Obama Plan Improves Regulatory Structure but Doesn't Address Accountability

Znet Article, June, 17 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

There are many useful features of President Obama's proposals for the reform of the regulatory system. Most notably, the plan to establish an agency to ensure that financial products are fair and transparent to consumers is a big step forward. Suc...

Znet Article Baker: Waterboard the Fed?

Znet Article, May, 28 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

To my knowledge, no one has proposed waterboarding the Fed. However, the response of much of the country's political leadership to the suggestion that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit the Federal Reserve Board might lead people to ...

Znet Article Baker: The Heath Care Industry: Protectionism the Free Traders Love

Znet Article, May, 21 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Suppose that people in the United States paid twice as much for our cars as people in Canada, Germany, and every other wealthy country. Economists would no doubt be pointing out the enormous amount of waste in the U.S. auto industry. They would in...

Znet Article Baker: Was This Bailout Necessary?

Znet Article, May, 19 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that we don't need to bail out the banks anymore based on the results of his stress tests. We should follow up quickly on his assessment and start shutting the special Fed lending facilities enjoyed by the ...

Znet Article Baker: The Bankrupt Debate Over Bankrupting Our Children

Znet Article, May, 17 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Suppose that the federal government decided to give every newborn baby $200,000. That might seem like an extremely generous gift. However, by the peculiar accounting of those who claim to be watchdogs for future generations, this policy would be b...

Znet Article Baker: Health Care and Student Loans: The Bad Guys Are on the Run

Znet Article, May, 12 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Progressives should be feeling good right now. There is clear evidence that we are winning on two really big issues.

Znet Article Baker: Rate of Job Loss Slows Moderately, Unemployment Rate Rises to 8.9 Percent

Znet Article, May, 09 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April, down from an average of 680,000 over the prior five months. The unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent, in spite of the fact that the household survey actually showed an increase in employment of 120,...

Znet Article Baker: Systematic Risk Regulators and the Power of Arithmetic

Znet Article, May, 06 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The current craze in DC policy circles is to create a "systematic risk regulator" to make sure that the country never experiences another economic crisis like the current one. This push is part of a cover-up of what really went wrong and does abso...

Znet Article Baker: Outsourcing Top Management: The Lesson of Fiat-Chrysler

Znet Article, May, 04 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The media coverage of the auto bailouts has focused on the need for union autoworkers to take big pay cuts, causing them to once again miss the real story. The Fiat-Chrysler deal shows that the pay problem is at the top, not the bottom. At the end...

Znet Article Baker: Financial Transactions Tax: The Perfect Gift for Wall Street

Znet Article, April, 28 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Just like that perfect sweater, a financial transactions tax (FTT) would look just great on those Wall Street bankers and financiers. A modest tax, which would be too small for normal investors to even notice, could easily raise more than $100 bil...

Znet Article Baker: The Wall Street Whine: Goldman Sachs Edition

Znet Article, April, 26 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, is very upset with the TARP. Last fall, Mr. Blankfein borrowed $10 billion through the TARP at below market interest rates. Now the government is starting to tie some real condition to this money, for exa...

Znet Article Baker: The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Znet Article, April, 21 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

It is often said that the there are few forces as destructive as the power of bad economics. Rarely has this been more clearly demonstrated than in the current crisis.

Znet Article Baker: The Need to Tax the Wealthy

Znet Article, April, 17 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The quest to increase taxes on the wealthy is not a gratuitous attack on upper income households; it is driven by the need to raise more revenue to run the government. While many deficit hawks been irresponsible in raising fears of an impending co...

Znet Article Baker: If the Bank Bailout Fails, Will Anyone Get the Boot?

Znet Article, April, 16 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

This is a rude question to many people, which is why it is so important that it be asked. The Obama administration is moving forward with a massive bailout program to rid the banks of their bad assets. The plan could involve as much as $1 trillion...

Znet Article Baker: False Hope in a Plunging Economy

Znet Article, April, 14 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Many economic analysts have seized on several recent economic reports to claim that the economy has bottomed out and that the upturn is in sight. This analysis badly misreads the data.

Znet Article Baker: How Much Do We Have to Pay Fannie and Freddie Execs to Lose Us Billions?

Znet Article, April, 13 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Apparently we have to give them more than $200 million in bonuses to give them enough incentive to lose.

Znet Article Baker: Hands off Social Security

Znet Article, April, 08 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

As a result of incredible economic mismanagement and the greed and incompetence of the financial industry, the country is in the worst downturn since the Great Depression. In this collapse we have seen the most massive intergenerational transfer i...

Znet Article Baker: Bankers Wrecked the Auto Industry

Znet Article, April, 07 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Is there a good reason for keeping the Obama administration intimately involved in the firms it aids in Detroit but not the firms on Wall Street?

Znet Article Baker: A Trillion Dollars for the Banks: How About a Second Opinion?

Znet Article, April, 06 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to have the government lend up to a trillion dollars to hedge funds, private equity, funds and the banks themselves to clear their books of toxic assets. The plan implies a substantial subsidy to the banks...

Znet Article Baker: Unemployment Jumps to 8.5 Percent, Economy Sheds 663,000 Jobs

Znet Article, April, 03 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March as the economy shed another 663,000 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the job loss reported for March, and upward revisions of 84,000 for the prior two months, the economy h...

Znet Article Baker: A Stimulus for Working Fewer Hours

Znet Article, March, 31 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

More than 12 million workers in the United States are currently unemployed, with the number rising rapidly. The problem with the economy is that we can produce more goods and services than is being demanded. The way we generally deal with lack of ...

Znet Article Baker: Geithner's Plan Will Tax Main Street to Make Wall Street Richer

Znet Article, March, 30 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The new consensus among the experts who missed the housing bubble (EMHB) is that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's plan to subsidize the purchase of junk mortgages and their derivatives will help alleviate the stress on the banking system. That's ...

Znet Article Baker: The Geithner Plan: Billions More for Failed Banks

Znet Article, March, 24 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's latest bank bailout plan is another Rube Goldberg contraption intended to funnel taxpayer dollars to bankrupt banks, without being overly visible about the process. The main mechanism is a government guarantee...

Znet Article Baker: The Battle Over the A.I.G. Bonuses: Class War in the Media

Znet Article, March, 23 2009 Dean Baker
Baker's ZSpace page

The debate over the A.I.G. bonuses is class war in its full naked glory. On the surface, everyone agreed that paying multi-million bonuses to the folks who bankrupted their company and handed the taxpayers a bill for $170 billion ($2,300 for a fam...

Loading_border