As part of the Roosevelt Institute's 10-part series on the Jobs Crisis, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog from Nov. 12-25, I was asked to reflect on what can be done to get Americans working again. Here's my take.

At 10.2%, unemployment is now at its highest level...

How appropriate that with Halloween just around the corner, the Fed and Treasury have announced a coordinated effort that will put the central bank at the forefront of pay regulation on the zombie firms now kept alive courtesy of US government largesse. Trick or treat...

If nothing else, the Obama Administration has learned the virtues of Clintonian spin. The so-called "financial reform victory" claimed Friday over approved new rules for over-the-counter derivatives is, in reality, akin to using a band-aid to treat gangrene.

Any kind of bill which (in...

It seems there isn't a day that goes by without more commentary on the demise of the dollar and the concomitant risk of a collapse of the world's reserve currency. Again, the reasoning here appears largely to be based on the tyranny of orthodox neo-liberal...

We've said it before and we'll say it again. As a matter of national accounting, the domestic private sector cannot increase savings unless and until foreign or government sectors increase deficits. Call this the tyranny of double entry bookkeeping: the government's deficit equals by identity the non-government's surplus.

So, if...

So it has come to this. According to the NY Times, regulators are "seriously considering a plan to have the nation's healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because...

The President has marked the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers with a new speech designed to breathe new life into his financial reform proposals. But the Obama administration already forfeited its best chance to reform the banking system when the crisis was at its height.

For all of...

Hundreds of thousands of people marched to the U.S. Capitol on Sunday, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and our so-called "out-of-control spending." The marchers were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others, channeling their inner Joe...

A history of failed attempts to introduce universal health insurance has left us with a system in which the government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of the nation's health care, but the actual delivery both of insurance and of care is undertaken by a crazy quilt of...

So now it appears to be official: Obama does plan to drop the public insurance option. The "change you can believe in" President is metamorphosing before our eyes into the champion of the status quo. As if to add insult to injury, we have this gem yesterday, from Politico.com:

Senator Charles Schumer indicated earlier this week that Democrats were fleshing out plans to pass health legislation, particularly the option of a new government-run insurance program, with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes that would ordinarily be needed to overcome a filibuster. Typically for the party...

No more free passes. A number of the President's supporters who expressed concerns about the pro-Wall Street tilt of his early administration decisions were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt so long as he came through on healthcare. Obama's statement over the weekend that the public option...

Once all the TARPs are tidied up and the quarterly profits no longer a revelation, American consumers will still be swaddled in debt. What's to stop them from just walking away from it -- and who's to say, if the banks keep this kind of behavior up, we don't want...

Goldman has given some cash back, but it's chump change for a company that's benefited from close ties to the Fed for more than 15 years, Marshall Auerback argues at NewDeal2.0

Give Lloyd Blankfein some credit. After weeks of being raked over the coals, Goldman Sachs became the first...

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Marshall Auerback wonders why bailed-out banks are getting giddy with dangerous speculation and sky-high bonuses when the rest of us are still dealing with financial chaos. Has the American public had enough?

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., the three biggest U.S....

As California's IOUs signal desperation, Roosevelt Braintruster Marshall Auerback suggests that a Pecora-style Commission could help the public recognize the folly of past economic dogmas that led us into this mess.

At first glance, there would appear to be little connection between California's mounting fiscal crisis and the renewed calls...

Over the past few months, the dollar index has declined some 10 percent amidst repeated calls by leading creditor nations such as China for a new global currency. This has been a recurrent feature of Chinese-American financial diplomacy for several months now, as Beijing frets that their substantial dollar hordes...

State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments -- when they have jobs: firemen, policemen, teachers, civil servants.

Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on...