Jeff Madrick

The discourse about the positive purposes and possibilities of government has been barren for a generation in America. What discussion there is has been dominated by proposals and philosophical disquisitions on how to make the most of less government, but rarely about new avenues for government action or new possibilities...

As Spain (momentarily?) reels again as rates rise over doubts it can roll over its debt, it is time to step back and note that the eurozone can almost surely solve its problems in the medium term if it truly wants to. Surprise? It shouldn't be. But rarely...

Rick Santorum has found a new populist voice in criticizing Obama's "theology." He claims he does not mean Obama is not a Christian, but apparently his belief in a number of progressive policies, including formal schooling for Americans, violates Santorum's deeply held theological views. Pandering to ignorance is...

President Obama's budget for 2013 is a sharp improvement over his 2012 budget. What a difference a year makes. Back then, the emphasis was all deficit all the time. If I exaggerate a bit, it is because the Obama administration was so wrong-headed. He wanted to reduce discretionary spending to...

Why are mainstream economists, right and left, so determined to push back any attempt to subsidize manufacturing in America? The question will arise anew tonight when President Obama presents his budget, complete with tax provisions to support manufacturing. After the president addressed the issue as his first topic in...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

I was at an Occupy Wall Street demonstration this weekend and many clergy addressed the group. One nun told the crowd it was Christmas season and that it was time for something new to be born in America.

It was a nice thought,...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

The Congressional Super Committee to cut the budget deficit, due to report soon, has let it be known that it will cut Social Security benefits. Let me be short and sour about this. It is a public relations stunt. They basically...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

There is a general idea around that the euro is bound to fail because you can't get 17 countries to agree on a single fiscally-oriented rescue policy. Christine Lagarde, the new IMF director and the most refreshing economic voice in Europe, has said...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

The poverty data released by the Census Bureau last week may well be the straw that broke the camel's back -- the camel being those deliberately blind people who can't seem to acknowledge that most Americans are doing poorly. Average Americans...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Does anyone really think that Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt would have occurred unless there had been the Congressional stand-off on raising the debt ceiling? For all of S&P's handwringing about the nation's debt problems, Congressional recalcitrance was the driving issue. So...

Of course, it's all about jobs. But why did the president ever think differently? Elizabeth Drew and others write that the White House believed that the message of the 2010 losses was that Americans believed government spending was out of hand. Thus, cutting government spending -- or at least balancing...

A New York Times article on Sunday by the fine journalist Catherine Rampell suggested that a reason the jobs crisis in America (my phrase) is not getting sufficient attention is that the unemployment rate, even if a very high 9.2 percent, still means that nearly 91 percent are...

The sudden weakening of the economic recovery is now undermining even the stock market. As usual, however, Wall Street is worried about profits and a possible double-dip recession. But what the press and the Obama administration have not adequately taken up is how poor job and

Nothing surprises me more than when I read that trading on insider information is a victimless crime. In the wake of the conviction of hedge-fund giant Raj Rajaratnam, the claim has come up time and again. In fact, it is entirely untrue. The victims are all those who sold Raj...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

The Republicans are rushing to claim credit for George Bush's interrogation techniques in the demise of Osama bin Laden. Someone being "interrogated" gave up the name of the courier who eight years later was tracked painstakingly to the Osama compound in Pakistan.

The...

A New York Times story today is titled, "On Budget Dispute, Obama Casts Himself as Mediator in Chief." To me this is chilling, if obvious. He has long been the mediator, as if he were a Sunday morning talk show host. The attitude that he must always appear...

As the nation celebrates the hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birthday, the mischaracterization of his tenure as president is a national tragedy in itself. The media's need to gloss over its glaring failures -- failures that live on for all of us -- is now so common that it hardly...

There are ongoing discussions in Democratic circles since the Republican electoral victories about how the president can get re-elected in 2012. The few I've attended ignore the most salient and disturbing fact of them all: the unemployment rate come election day will almost certainly be well above 8 percent, and...

I didn't quite believe my eyes this morning when I read an op-ed piece by Martin Feldstein in The Wall Street Journal. Obama caused the growing debt levels, he says. For you nonbelievers, here's the quote: "Much of the projected doubling of the national debt between now and...

The draft proposal released as a surprise yesterday by the two chairmen of President Obama's fiscal commission is conceived and written in panic. It is a profoundly ideological set of policy prescriptions. The co-authors are counting on national alarm over the current budget deficit to make extreme proposals seem reasonable....