May 1 may be a good day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but the future depends on the job prospects and wages of the average worker.
Europe is sliding into recession, and gas prices are still high. But the real problem lies closer to home. Cuts in government spending are reducing domestic demand precisely at the time when consumers are reaching the end of their ropes and can't spend more.
The latest jobs report is bad news for millions of Americans, and it's bad news for Obama and the Democrats. No set of policies between now and Election Day are likely to boost the economy.
We don't need socialism. We need a capitalism that works for the vast majority. The productivity revolution should be making our lives better -- not poorer and more insecure. And it will do that when we have the political will to spread its benefits.
Yes, America has a long-term budget deficit that's scary. So does Europe. But the first priority in America and in Europe must be growth and jobs.
America's real problems have nothing to do with what we do in our bedrooms and everything to do with what top executives do in their boardrooms and executive suites. Our crisis has nothing to do with private morality. It's a crisis of public morality.
What just happened at J.P. Morgan reveals how fragile and opaque the banking system continues to be, why Glass-Steagall must be resurrected, and why the Dallas Fed's recent recommendation that Wall Street's giant banks be broken up should be heeded.
Mitt Romney doesn't want to regulate where regulation is necessary -- at the highest reaches of the economy. Yet he wants to regulate where regulation is least appropriate -- at the level of the individual, in bedrooms and other intimate spaces.
Obama does have a choice. He can assail Romney's character but he can also take on the system that allows private-equity managers, as well as Wall Street's biggest banks, to continue to make huge profits at the expense of average Americans.
I was in Bill Clinton's cabinet. I was in charge of Clinton's economic transition team even before he became president. I've known Bill Clinton since he was 22 years old. Romney doesn't know what he's talking about.
Members of the Class of 2012, as a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you're picking up today. You're f*cked.
Bain Capital and JPMorgan are parts of the same problem -- a particular kind of capitalism that uses other peoples' money to make big bets which, if they go wrong, can wreak havoc on the economy. The president should be leading the charge against both.
Mitt Romney epitomizes the unfairness of the American economy in this new Gilded Age. For that same reason, Romney is the quintessence of an economic approach shown to be anti-growth and anti-jobs. The president needs to tell this to the American people.
Fine to nail Romney with Bain capitalism. But let's not forget Romney's budget proposal, which mimics Paul Ryan's. Take a moment to make yourself aware of both, because they're eye-opening and scary.
At a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and non-defense discretionary spending (including most programs for the poor, as well as infrastructure and basic R&D) are in serious jeopardy, Obama and the Democrats should be calling for even more defense cuts.
Here is a way for us to avoid the austerity trap that Europe has fallen into. And we get on with the long-term job of taming the budget deficit when the economy is healthy enough to do so.
Maybe Mitt has decided to let it all hang out. Rather than try to hide what's obvious to everyone, the new strategy is to make Romney's liabilities into assets by flaunting them. The new bumper-sticker: ROMNEY-TRUMP IN 2012. YOU'RE FIRED!
