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Robert Kuttner
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Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect
magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the think tank
Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe.

The Squandering of America, exploring the political roots of America's
narrowing prosperity and the systemic risks facing the U.S. economy, is
Bob's seventh book. The book was recently honored with the Sidney
Hillman Journalism Award. Bob has just begun work on a new book on
trade, equality, efficiency, and the challenge of regulating global
capitalism.

Bob's best-known earlier book is Everything for Sale: The Virtues and
Limits of Markets (1997). The book received a page one review in the New York Times Book Review. Of it, the late economist Robert Heilbroner
wrote, "I have never seen the market system better described, more
intelligently appreciated, or more trenchantly criticized than in
Everything for Sale."

Bob's other previous books on economics and politics include; The End of Laissez-Faire (1991); The Life of the Party (1987); The Economic Illusion (1984); and Revolt of the Haves (1980).

Bob's magazine writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Dissent, Columbia Journalism Review, and Harvard Business Review. He has contributed major articles to The New England Journal of Medicine as a national policy correspondent.

For four decades, Bob's intellectual and political project has been to
revive the politics and economics of harnessing capitalism to serve a
broad public interest. He has pursued this ideal as a writer, editor,
teacher, lecturer, commentator and public official.

You can follow him on Facebook as well as Twitter.

Blog Entries by Robert Kuttner

Munich on the Potomac: The Republican Take-No-Prisoners Strategy -- and Obama's Conciliation

(867) Comments | Posted May 12, 2013 | 10:36 PM

Republicans in both Houses of Congress are becoming more and more flagrant in their strategy of holding the governing process hostage for far-right demands not shared by most voters. And the pity is that the strategy is mostly working.

The more that the Obama Administration tries to meet the Republicans...

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Half Empty: Another Feeble Jobs Report

(436) Comments | Posted May 5, 2013 | 10:26 PM

The press strained to find some good news in the government's April employment report. Superficially, things appeared a little better. The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent, and the number of long-term unemployed people declined by about 258,000. The government revised upwards the number of new jobs created, to...

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Reality 1, Austerity 0

(793) Comments | Posted April 28, 2013 | 10:26 PM

It's been a very bad week for the merchants of austerity.

In Europe, the just-released statistics on first quarter performance show EU nations sliding deeper into recession. In Spain and Greece, unemployment rates are approaching a staggering 30 percent. In Britain, the Tory government took as good news the fact...

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Safe and Free

(375) Comments | Posted April 22, 2013 | 10:06 AM

As a Bostonian, I have complex feelings about my civil liberties and my family's personal safety in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings. My wife was a block from the first explosion. My son and four-year-old grandson had considered going to the finish line and then changed their plans. The...

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The Budget Speech Obama Didn't Give

(610) Comments | Posted April 14, 2013 | 10:33 PM

There are two paths to deficit reduction. One is slash and burn. We cut the investments that the country needs. We weaken the purchasing power of seniors. We end up with lower household income, a slower rate of growth and we get the grim satisfaction of budget balance in a...
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Cut Social Security to Destroy the Recovery

(932) Comments | Posted April 7, 2013 | 10:31 PM

President Obama picked the very day that new job creation collapsed to propose a deflationary budget deal featuring cuts in Social Security and Medicare. This is perverse economics and worse politics, on several grounds.

The economy created just 88,000 jobs in March, down from close to 200,000 in other...

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Looking Backwards

(309) Comments | Posted March 31, 2013 | 10:25 PM

November 5, 2014

Jubilant Republicans took back the Senate in yesterday's mid-term election, and appeared to have increased their majority in the House by about ten seats.

"Barack Obama is now the lamest of lame ducks," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, now the Majority Leader, who held on to...

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Talking 'Bout My Generation

(927) Comments | Posted March 17, 2013 | 10:35 PM

I will start drawing Social Security next month. I think I've earned it. On the other hand, I have to admit that society has been good to my generation.

I was able to graduate from a good private college with no debt. Four years at Oberlin cost $10,000 -- tuition,...

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The Grand Bargain We Don't Need

(786) Comments | Posted March 10, 2013 | 10:19 PM

President Obama has been meeting with small groups of Republican senators and representatives in an effort to reduce the damage of the so-called sequester -- the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts that took effect March 1. But these meetings, if successful, are likely to lead to greater economic and...

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Economy Sick, Politics Deadlocked? How About a Trade Deal!?

(243) Comments | Posted March 4, 2013 | 9:07 AM

The economy faces a persistent budget crisis.

Pushback from Wall Street has gutted most of the banking reforms, unemployment is stuck around 8 percent, corporate profits have been soaring while there is no wage growth -- and the newest White House proposal is... a free trade zone with Europe.

...
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The Sequestering of Barack Obama

(29) Comments | Posted February 26, 2013 | 1:18 PM

President Obama has miscalculated both the tactical politics of the sequester and the depressive economic impact of budget cuts on the rest of his presidency. The sequester will cut economic growth in half this year. But it's now clear, one way or another, that we will get cuts in the...

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The Sequester Debacle: Who Takes the Fall?

(546) Comments | Posted February 24, 2013 | 9:40 PM

President Obama and his advisers are wagering that Republicans will take the political blame if the sequester of $85 billion in automatic budget cuts is actually executed March 1. The president's public remarks keep emphasizing the risk to the recovery, the loss of jobs, the inconvenience to the public and...

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The Last Liberal Branch of Government

(738) Comments | Posted February 17, 2013 | 9:57 PM

If you want to appreciate just how conservative the fiscal conventional wisdom is, consider that hotbed of Bolshevism, the Federal Reserve. Yes, the central bank that progressives love to hate is today the most expansionist outfit in town.

Although they are arguing about the details, both President Obama and the...

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The Sorry State of Our Union

(856) Comments | Posted February 10, 2013 | 9:26 PM

President Obama delivers his fifth State of the Union Address on Tuesday. Based on White House leaks, the president will emphasize rebuilding the middle class. He will invoke the importance of education, infrastructure, clean energy, and manufacturing.

These are terrific themes, economically and politically. The only problem is that rebuilding...

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Weak Economy, Wrong Debate

(587) Comments | Posted February 3, 2013 | 5:27 PM

What is it with this economy? The Dow hits 14,000, the unemployment rate rises in January, and GDP actually falls in the last three months of 2012. Could it be that what's good for the stock market is bad for the rest of the economy? Could it be that captains...

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Obama's Heaviest Lift

(942) Comments | Posted January 27, 2013 | 9:42 PM

President Obama is off to a good start in his second term. "We, the people," he pledged in his second inaugural, "still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity." Amen to that.

But as the economy continues its agonizingly slow recovery, his greatest challenge...

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The State of Obama

(349) Comments | Posted January 20, 2013 | 9:46 PM

President Obama has heartened progressives with many actions since his re-election. He seems to grasp that he has a lot more power to move public opinion than he used in his first term. He also understands that most of the Republican positions on the issues are unpopular with broad public,...

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The Budget Talks -- Advantage: Republicans

(186) Comments | Posted January 13, 2013 | 9:41 PM

Unless President Obama drastically changes his goals and his tactics, the current round of budget negotiations can only lead to deeper spending cuts. Here's why.

The Two Roads to Fiscal Balance. Before we explore why the politics of budget cutting now favor the Republicans, let's keep in mind the economics:...

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The Jobs Numbers and the Deficit

(276) Comments | Posted January 6, 2013 | 9:37 PM

The private sector created 155,000 jobs in December, almost exactly the average for the 11 previous months of 2012 and for all of 2011. Once again, it is a record far too weak to produce real progress towards either an adequate recovery or decent growth in wages and salaries. At...

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New Year, New Low for Republicans

(1002) Comments | Posted December 30, 2012 | 9:30 PM

Four years ago Barack Obama prepared to take the oath of office as a Democratic president, at a moment when free market ideology and Republican incumbency were disgraced by events. But a year that should have marked the end of the laissez-faire fantasy and the resurgence of effective government instead...

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