“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Paul Krugman: Europe’s Economic Suicide
On Saturday The Times reported on an apparently growing phenomenon in Europe: “suicide by economic crisis,” people taking their own lives in despair over unemployment and business failure. It was a heartbreaking story. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only reader, especially among economists, wondering if the larger story isn’t so much about individuals as about the apparent determination of European leaders to commit economic suicide for the Continent as a whole.
Just a few months ago I was feeling some hope about Europe. You may recall that late last fall Europe appeared to be on the verge of financial meltdown; but the European Central Bank, Europe’s counterpart to the Fed, came to the Continent’s rescue. It offered Europe’s banks open-ended credit lines as long as they put up the bonds of European governments as collateral; this directly supported the banks and indirectly supported the governments, and put an end to the panic.
Robert Reich: Why a Fair Economy is Not Incompatible with Growth but Essential to It
One of the most pernicious falsehoods you’ll hear during the next seven months of political campaigning is there’s a necessary tradeoff between fairness and economic growth. By this view, if we raise taxes on the wealthy the economy can’t grow as fast.
Wrong. Taxes were far higher on top incomes in the three decades after World War II than they’ve been since. And the distribution of income was far more equal. Yet the American economy grew faster in those years than it’s grown since tax rates on the top were slashed in 1981.
This wasn’t a post-war aberration. Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy in the 1990s, and the economy produced faster job growth and higher wages than it did after George W. Bush slashed taxes on the rich in his first term.
It’s understandable if unfortunate that the controversy surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin has polarized the country along both racial and ideological lines. But there is one issue that should not have any racial connotations: the urgency of repealing “Stand Your Ground” laws.
And leave it to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak the blunt truth about why these laws are dangerous – and why the National Rifle Association keeps pushing them anyway.
“In reality,” Bloomberg said in a speech before the National Press Club last week, “the NRA’s leaders weren’t interested in public safety. They were interested in promoting a culture where people take the law into their own hands and face no consequences for it. Let’s call that by its real name: vigilantism.”
Robert Kuttner: You’ve Come a Long Way, Ben
I heard a terrific speech last Friday by the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke.
In his address, to a Russell Sage-Century Foundation Conference on the causes and cure of the financial crisis, Chairman Bernanke said just about everything a progressive would want to hear. Read it for yourself and see if you agree.
The financial industry, he said, had been characterized by “high levels of leverage; excessive dependence on unstable short term funding; deficiencies in risk management in major financial firms; and the use of exotic and non-transparent financial instruments that obscured concentrations of risk.” In other words, Wall Street went berserk; and markets did not correct themselves. Add a little more invective about Goldman Sachs and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi could not have put it better.
John Nichols: What Allen West Does Not Know About Communists and Congress
Florida Congressman Allen West was wrong when he suggested that there were dozens of communists in the current Congress. Misled by crank websites, the out-there Republican from Florida said Tuesday, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party… They actually don’t hide it. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”
It would be generous, indeed, to suggest that West is confused.
The Congress is not currently a haven for followers of Karl Marx.
And there are none to be found in the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has over the years included a few friends of democratic socialism-which espouses an economic and social justice vision every bit as far removed from the Stalinist excesses that West seems to be decrying as the current Republican Party’s views are from those of its radical founders.
Greg Kaufman: This Week in Poverty: Will Pennsylvania Rip Another Hole in the Safety Net?
If you’ve never heard of state-funded General Assistance (GA) programs, you’re hardly alone. A “safety net of last resort” for very poor people-often childless adults-who don’t qualify for other forms of public assistance, there aren’t too many of them still in existence. Not too long ago most states offered them, but in recent decades they have been eliminated or severely restricted. Now, only thirty states maintain GA programs, and the benefit level for most falls below one-quarter of the poverty line, or less than $2,750 per year.
In a recent report for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Liz Schott and Clare Cho call this trend “especially troubling” since “a growing number of jobless and elderly” are exhausting their unemployment benefits and continue to be unable to find work.
“Poor, childless adults are becoming even more vulnerable to severe hardship than in the past and are doing so in greater numbers,” write the authors.
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