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. Everyone should know not to take them seriously, as I will...

The Obama administration is having a tough time getting its request for $108 billion for the IMF through Congress. Bank bailouts are rapidly losing popularity. And bailouts of foreign banks are probably even less popular than bailouts of U.S. banks.

But, NPR is rushing to the rescue. It had a...

We know it's not easy being an economist these days. Everyone blames you for the fact that they are losing their jobs and their homes, and their life savings. They hold you responsible because you didn't warn the country about an $8 trillion housing bubble.

Well there's no point in...

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 absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem...

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 of the...

In most areas of public policy the Obama administration has given the country a sharp and welcome break from the policies of the prior administration. Unfortunately, this is not the case with his financial policy. To a large extent Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has continued the Bush-Paulson "save the banks"...

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. It is likely to result in the disposal of...

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 good news.

These geniuses have devised a plan that for $1...

In the movie Lars and the Real Girl, the main character imagines that a female blow-up doll is his fiancé. To humor Lars, his brother and sister-in-law go along with the charade. Over the course of the movie, more people are drawn into the circle, until eventually the whole town...

There are few economists who would defend the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt last September. Its collapse induced a worldwide panic that sent stock markets plummeting and caused credit to freeze up. In the subsequent months, the downturn went into over-drive, with the United States losing almost...

Commodity trader Rick Santelli made himself into a national hero of sorts with his televised diatribe about being forced to pay the mortgages of "losers" who could not afford, or would not pay, the full cost of their mortgage. Santelli apparently hit a chord among those who want to blame...

Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with "reforming" Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse...

Jeff Faux, my former boss at the Economic Policy Institute, tells a story from his days as a foot soldier in President Johnson's War on Poverty. Johnson was asked by a delegation from Alaska if he had an anti-poverty program for their state. Johnson assured the delegation that he had...

The reporters covering the stimulus have been so busy editorializing against it that they haven't had time to pay attention to what Congress is doing. Last night Congress approved the Isakson amendment which gives $15,000 (or 10 percent of the purchase price, whichever is lower) to every person who buys...

Hold onto your wallets. The bankers are coming bank for more money. They burned through the $350 billion that we gave them in the first round of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and they are worried that even the second $350 billion will not be enough money to keep...

For some reason most of the discussion in Washington and the media of the bank bailouts is overlooking their central feature: taxpayer dollars are being used to sustain the income of incredibly rich bankers. The public should be furious over this upward redistribution of income.

The basic story here is...

We got into the current economic crisis because many very smart people with outstanding credentials were unable to use simple arithmetic. If they knew arithmetic, they would have been able to see an $8 trillion housing bubble that was right in front of their faces.

The basic story was incredibly...

President-elect Obama apparently believes that the crisis brought on by the collapse of the housing bubble will require defaulting on the national debt. The New York Times reported today that Obama believes that "changes in Social Security and Medicare will be central to efforts to bring federal spending in...

The latest mutterings from Congress, especially the Republican leadership, indicate that they still don't have a clue about the seriousness of the economic downturn we are facing. They are saying that they can't have a stimulus package ready for when President Obama takes office in two weeks, and that a...

Imagine a major national newspaper that never saw an $8 trillion dollar housing bubble. Suppose its most often cited expert on the housing market was the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, who also authored the 2006 bestseller : Why the Housing Boom Will Not Bust and...