Several events of the past week should be a wake-up call to the Obama administration. Bottom line: the medicine isn't working. Stronger stuff is needed. Consider:

The June Unemployment Numbers. The green-shoots school was expecting that the rising rate of unemployment would continue to slow, as...

Reuters is out with an authoritative story on finalists being considered for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the investigative body created by Congress to launch a full-scale investigation of the financial crisis in the spirit of the famous early 1930s hearings led by Ferdinand Pecora.

Those famous investigative...

I'm sure I'm not the only reader who noticed the juxtaposition of two front page stories in Sunday's New York Times dealing with health care. The first article cited a new Times-CBS poll showing that 72 percent of Americans favored a government run health plan comparable to Medicare, which...

The European left, such as it is, got clobbered in the recent elections for the European parliament. In the next parliament, center-right parties will have almost twice as many seats as social democrats. Of left parties, only the Greens gained slightly. Far-right nationalistic parties picked up strength.

There is a huge reality gap between the happy talk about green shoots, banks passing stress tests, the rise in unemployment slowing -- and what's happening out in the real economy, especially if you take a close look at banking and housing, ground zero of the economic crisis. Credit remains...

In 1932 through 1934 the Senate Banking Committee, led by its Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora, ferreted out the deeper fraud and corruption that led to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The Pecora Committee's findings helped change the political mood, and laid the groundwork for the sweeping financial...

This week, we learned that President Obama really is capable of political courage and idealism, as well as calculation. The question is how he will apply these gifts to the financial crisis as well as to issues closer to both his heart and to the strengths of his intellect, such...

Every year, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library gives a Profile in Courage Award to one or more public officials who took a stand that took a lot of integrity and nerve.

Past winners have included Alberto Mora, then the general counsel of the United States Navy, who...

I recently spoke at a Federal Reserve conference in Chicago, on financial regulation. The keynote speaker was Ben Bernanke. Chairman Bernanke was unable to leave Washington, so he spoke live, via a giant TV screen, giving his speech a fittingly Orwellian cast.

This was the day that the...

We are hearing a lot about the need for a new "Pecora Commission," to conduct a comprehensive investigation of all the Wall Street abuses that led to the financial collapse and the general recession that has followed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for such a commission. A House floor...

A severe economic crisis coupled with the election of a new progressive president is an opportunity for a dramatic break with the old order. But that process doesn't just happen spontaneously. It takes exceptional presidential resolve and leadership. And there are three huge obstacles to President Obama seizing the moment...

Some time in the next two weeks, the Treasury will report on the result of "stress tests" conducted on 19 major banks. But you don't have to wait to learn the results. It's already clear that no major bank will be declared insolvent. The administration's economic assumptions about the worst...

"Part of the Way with LBJ"

--Students for a Democratic Society button, circa 1964

Progressives now find themselves in an awkward position of simultaneously wishing Barack Obama well, but feeling dismayed by his policies on some key issues, most notably the banking bailout. If this were...

Brussels -- While the heads of the world's twenty leading nations did their best to paper over serious divisions at the G-20 economic summit in London, here in Brussels leaders of the world's democratic left held a summit of their own to take stock and plan strategy. At the Global...

I fear that these columns have been too polite. They have directed criticisms at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and national economic policy chief Larry Summers. Lord knows, they richly deserve the criticism. But let's not kid ourselves. The man they work for is named Barack Obama.

President Obama has...

The political and pundit classes have spent the past week expressing outrage over bonuses paid to AIG executives. In case you have been on Jupiter, this is the company that has received $183 billion from taxpayers to cover part of its gambling losses that helped crash the entire system.

In the past two weeks, political support for the Tim Geithner/Larry Summers approach to solving the banking crisis has been unraveling in Congress, with blistering criticism from legislators of both parties.

The financial danger is that the Treasury will burn through the money approved by Congress without fixing the...

[Note: These memos fell into my hands. I cannot guarantee their authenticity--RK]

From: BHO

To: Rahm Emanuel

Subject: The Banks

Extremely Sensitive

Rahm,

I'm concerned that I'm getting only one viewpoint on how to solve the banking crisis, from Larry and Tim. A kind of echo-chamber effect...

President Obama deserves immense credit for being willing to spend serious money to prevent recession from becoming depression. He has resisted pressures from fiscal conservatives to put budget balance first, or to make social insurance bear the brunt of spending cuts down the road. And he has used his gifts...

Dear David,

President Obama faces two huge challenges in the next few months. One is dealing with the reality of an impending depression. It will take much stronger medicine to avert a depression than the measures taken to date, and the president needs to rally public opinion if he...