Pay no attention to the stock market. The real economy is jobs and paychecks, what people buy and what they sell. And the real economy -- even viewed from a worldwide perspective -- is as precarious as ever, perhaps more so.
The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that's barely moving. We learned that lesson decades ago; until we remember it again, we'll be stuck in the Great Recession.
Obama's whopping proposed corporate tax cuts help legitimize the supply-side dogma that the economy's biggest obstacle to growth is the cost of capital, rather than the plight of ordinary working people.
Economically, the underlying problem is structural, not cyclical. There will be no return to normal because normal got us into the hole in the first place, and the normal set of prescriptions can't possibly get us out of it.
Large American corporations are going global as fast as they can. That's good for their shareholders. But in a Washington ever more susceptible to their money and influence, that's not necessarily good for most Americans.
I was there November 14, 1995 when Newt Gingrich pulled the plug on the federal government the first time. It proved to be the stupidest political move in recent history.
In the 1930s and 1940s, we restructured our economy to widen prosperity. The result was the Great Prosperity -- a period running from 1947 to 1975, in which the American economy boomed.
The central challenge we face isn't to re-balance trade with China. It's to re-balance the American economy so its benefits are more widely shared.
Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they'll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.
On Monday at a "town hall" sponsored by CNBC in Washington, the president took questions about the economy. His answers were good as far as they went -- but, unfortunately, they didn't go far enough.
The economy can't run on its own because consumers have reached the end of their ropes. After three decades of flat wages and growth going to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going.
We taxpayers are paying some people (GM executives) to tell us how we should vote for another group of people (House and Senate candidates) who will decide how our taxes will be used in the future. What's wrong with this picture?
The social contract worked to everyone's advantage, because it gave the middle class the buying power to keep the economy going. Even those at the top did well as the economy boomed.
Democrats have given up a defining issue that could have enabled them to show the big story of the last three decades -- the accumulation of almost all the gain from economic growth at the top -- and to make a start at reversing it.
Today's issues aren't just economic. We're back to tough love. Republicans want to force people to live with the consequences of whatever happens to them. In the late 19th century that was called Social Darwinism.
Why doesn't President Obama have a showdown with the GOP? Let them filibuster a jobs bill and show which side he's on and which side they're on?
