Attempts to paint the economic stimulus package as a failure begin with wordy paeans to budget austerity and end with anecdotes of Spanish wind turbines and prison inmates. Responsible Republicans claim to have proposed a more effective alternative to the stimulus, no matter that an economic adviser...

Friday's New York Times op-ed page contains a necessary, albeit anachronistic, criticism of the tax credit for first-time homebuyers, a "proposal" supported by Senator Chris Dodd. John Carney of ClusterStock and The BusinessInsider argues against extending and expanding the credit. Evidently, he didn't realize that Congress has already...

Conservative blogs have transformed into a hit parade of reasons why the House Affordable Health Care for America Act will kill jobs and the unborn, stifle economic recovery, and destroy ... education. Of course, the need to unsheathe so many harbingers of doom is mostly proof...

For the past month and a half or so, the Senate has been trying to pass an extension of unemployment insurance. The problem is clear: 7,000 unemployed workers are running out of benefits every day, 400,000 exhausted their benefits at the end of September, and 1.3 million will exhaust them...

In an editorial this morning, the New York Times rightly supports a congressional measure, passed by the House Financial Services Committee yesterday, that would hasten the implementation of credit card regulations created by the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (formerly the Credit Cardholders' Bill...

Consideration of legislation creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency in the Financial Services Committee this week has reignited debate about the proper role of state authority in regulating financial institutions. The debate features some strange ideological stances, with progressive Democrats arguing in favor of weak federal authority to preempt (read...

Although the stimulus jobs numbers released yesterday by the Obama administration reflect less than 1 percent of the $787 billion stimulus package, our Bubble-Boy mentality leads us to assume that this data means that the stimulus is not working. In any case, the persistently high unemployment rate has also contributed...

In one of those incisive, zeitgeist-capturing essays that makes you nod in agreement, T.A. Franks wrote recently in The Washington Monthly:

The first thing you need to know about New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is that he's always right. No, not in the way a drunk in a...

The financial crisis has left conservative policymakers on their guard. The notion that all financial innovation is good is not holding water and wonks on the right are scrambling to concoct viable alternatives to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) advocated by the White House and, in a weaker...

The recent Supreme Court hearing on the free speech rights of corporations has reignited the debate about corporate personhood. Corporate personhood refers to the handful of rights that corporations share with people, rights like property ownership and contracting. To most, the notion is prima facie a legal fiction: there...

That the unemployment rate “lags” in a recession is well-known.  This means that when economic growth returns, most households – and particularly the unemployed – experience little or no relief in the short term.  Though this is accepted as a rule of thumb, policymakers have done very little beyond ad...

A consensus on the causes of the financial crisis will probably never be reached. However, most observers agree on one thing, at least: that risk and reward, the ying and yang that keep the financial sector in balance, grew wildly out of whack. Perhaps unsurprisingly, congressional efforts to strengthen regulation...

Conservatives like to describe their ideal Supreme Court justice as an uninterested umpire who simply calls the law's balls and strikes, a metaphor Chief Justice Roberts employed during his confirmation hearing. These conservatives also like to describe the free market as the same sort of impartial arbiter, rewarding the productive...

Our understanding of markets and of the economy in general is undertaking a thorough rethinking.

In his New York Times magazine piece last weekend, Paul Krugman asserted that "Economics, as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a perfect, frictionless market system."...

"But it also had a direct -- direct -- you do not -- you get out of jail, you do not have to, you know, do anything other than you pass Go, you go right and you apply for the -- at a local level, you apply for the grant....

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a bill signed into law in 2008 in response to the Year of the Recall, is generating quite a bit of controversy for a measure designed to protect children from lead and other unsafe consumer products. Thrift and resale shops, along with...

The recent glorification of Cash for Clunkers is depressing. Although the program was not all that popular with the American public and its benefits were questionable, its lightning fast impact impressed the hyperactive news media. The Obama administration, beleaguered by endless weeks of health care drudgery, lapped up the...

The Obama Administration's "mid-session review," an adjustment of economic predictions made earlier in the year, confirms the already accepted wisdom that unemployment will breach the 10 percent mark before improving in 2010. While Ben Bernanke's re-nomination as Fed chief has stimulated talk of how best to unwind the Fed's...

In recent months, something of a parlor game has developed in which the media competes to draw comparisons between the Bush and Obama administrations. Purported examples include the continued use of the state secrets defense in cases against Guantanamo detainees, a disregard for budget deficits, and a focus on immigration...

The news is a muddle. The economy is showing signs of improvement -- the unemployment rate decreased last month -- or it is stagnant -- retail sales fell. The housing market is perking up -- housing starts for single family homes increased in July -- but 13 million homes...