Health care reform suffered the torments of partisan obstruction. Now gird yourself for financial reform and the perils of bipartisan blight.

In health care, lockstep Republican opposition caused months of delay, and empowered the likes of Connecticut's embittered Senator Joe Lieberman and Nebraska's compromised Ben Nelson to exact cankerous...

You know the Dickens: It's a "tale of two cities," "the best of times and the worst of times." On Wall Street, the big banks, basted with public succor, are ladling out record bonuses. Their leaders are arrogant enough to stiff the president's invitation to the woodshed. Even at AIG,...

Enjoy the health care debate? Wait until the Senate takes on the big banks. It already looks like déjà vu all over again. Democrats, bloodied from self-inflicted wounds in the health care debate, may well commit seppuku over financial reform.

The script is in place for a failed sequel. The...

President Obama is sensibly focused on jobs, unveiling a new initiative yesterday in the wake of the jobs summit. Elements included everything from new infrastructure spending to "cash for caulkers," tax breaks for weatherizing homes, as well as aid to cities, states and the unemployed. The president suggested that...

..."[O}ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

But Afghanistan comes first?

President Obama made the best possible case for dispatching more troops to Afghanistan last night. But his speech left me with...

Will the Senate vote another term for Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve? Should it?

Two months ago, Bernanke looked like a lock. But now unemployment is over 10% and rising, while Wall Street bankers are stocking up on vintage champagne, ready to celebrate the highest bonuses...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets it. No wonder she drives the wingnuts batty. With the Senate befuddled by the antics of Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus on health care and the White House Clintonistas lobbying the President to devote his January State of the Union address to deficit reduction, Pelosi...

This week, Barack Obama trips to China -- as part of an 8 day trip to Asia. The White House paints a full agenda -- Afghanistan, human rights, North Korean nukes, climate change, trade relations, and the economy. But it's really just the economy, stupid.

For decades during the...

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,

We've got a new red scare. Forget Glenn Beck, the fear isn't that America is going red, it's that it is in the red. Conservatives in both parties are raising alarms about deficits and government spending. Well, get over it. If we are going to generate growth and shared prosperity...

They are popping the bubbly on Wall Street. Million dollar bonuses; the Dow at 10,000; the casino is open again. Forget President Obama who says we can't go back to an economy where finance pockets 40% of the profits. We're already headed there.

The current account deficit is down as...

Even as the health insurance companies draw down on health care reform, another showdown is just beginning in Washington. On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee will begin marking up the first legislation to try to curb Wall Street's casino. And if you think the health insurance companies are packing...

Glenn Beck has captured national attention with his caustic poison. The aging right-wing troubadours -- Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly -- still rouse the wingnuts and enforce discipline among Republican legislators. They've peddled the fantasies about ACORN and the all-powerful poverty lobby, and launched a search-and-destroy hunt for targets of...

"Vandalism" screams the cover of the Economist, depicting Obama leaving an ice pick in the tire of free trade. (No racial overtones there; after all, as the president explained, he was black before he was elected.) When the president imposed tariffs on Chinese tire imports, following the ruling of...

The world economy is growing; stock markets are up; talk of recovery, not world depression, fills the business pages. As the leaders of the 20 leading economies gather in Pittsburgh this week, they might well feel the euphoria of someone who has survived a near death experience. (For an insightful...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, ....The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand

President Obama traveled to Wall Street on the anniversary of the collapse...

The President gives a great speech. He offers reason against hysteria. He summons us to our better angels. He challenges politicians and Americans to do "great things," because that is "who we are." He claims the center by defining himself against left and right, even as he acknowledges merit in...

At a delightful dinner party the other night, our host, a cosmopolitan man with interests ranging from water in California to Sufism in India, punctuated a brief complaint about the economy by noting, "and of course, I'm a nut on trade" (meaning an ardent advocate of our corporate "free trade"...

As Congress returns from its summer recess, President Obama, slipping in the polls, assailed on all sides by the carpers, faces a strategic choice: Lead the charge, rally Democrats, and push forward on his agenda, starting with health care reform or trim his sails and adopt a more cautious course.

The reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve -- cleverly timed to defuse the news of burgeoning federal deficits -- was preordained. The "markets" demanded it, and as James Carville noted, when the markets speak, presidents listen. (Carville, shocked at how Bob Rubin's arguments about...