“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 thea Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Those Depressing Germans
German officials are furious at America, and not just because of the business about Angela Merkel’s cellphone. What has them enraged now is one (long) paragraph in a U.S. Treasury report on foreign economic and currency policies. In that paragraph Treasury argues that Germany’s huge surplus on current account – a broad measure of the trade balance – is harmful, creating “a deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy.”
The Germans angrily pronounced this argument “incomprehensible.” “There are no imbalances in Germany which require a correction of our growth-friendly economic and fiscal policy,” declared a spokesman for the nation’s finance ministry.
But Treasury was right, and the German reaction was disturbing. For one thing, it was an indicator of the continuing refusal of policy makers in Germany, in Europe more broadly and for that matter around the world to face up to the nature of our economic problems. For another, it demonstrated Germany’s unfortunate tendency to respond to any criticism of its economic policies with cries of victimization.
Dean Baker: Plutocrats vs. Populists: Good Piece Until the End — Answers are Easy
Chrystia Freeland has a good piece in the NYT on the rise of plutocratic politics in the United States and elsewhere and the populist opposition it has provoked. The piece makes many interesting points but then towards the end strangely tells readers:
“Part of the problem is that no one has yet come up with a fully convincing answer to the question of how you harness the power of the technology revolution and globalization without hollowing out middle-class jobs.”
No, this is very far from true. There are very convincing answers to this question, it’s just the plutocrats block them from being put into practice.
Topping the list of course would be aggressive stimulus to bring the economy back to something resembling full employment. This not only would give tens of millions of people more income, it would make many bad jobs into decent jobs.
The more complex a system is, the more it is at risk of failing in complex ways that were not anticipated by its architects. It would be hard to imagine a more complicated way of expanding health coverage than the Affordable Care Act.
I say that, appreciating that Obamacare will eventually bring health coverage to tens of millions of uninsured people, that it will end the cruelty of denials of coverage based on “pre-existing conditions” (we all have the pre-existing condition of mortality); that it will allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance to age 26; and that it will require free preventive care under all insurance plans.
But there was a much simpler way of achieving this. We could have extended Medicare to everyone. Or if that was politically unthinkable, we could have extended Medicare a few years at a time — first to 60 year olds, then to 55 year olds, then to the young, and so on until everyone was covered.
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: The Lies That Will Kill America
Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it — the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “US robs bank of $13 billion.”
Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch’s minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors — those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. If anybody’s been robbed it’s not JPMorgan Chase, which can absorb the loss and probably take a tax write-off for at least part of it. No, it’s the American public. In addition to financial heartache we still have been denied the satisfaction of seeing jail time for any of the banksters who put our feet in cement and pushed us off the cliff.
Robert Reich: Why Washington Is Cutting Safety Nets When Most Americans Are Still in the Great Recession
As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.
We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers — including the nation’s largest, Walmart — now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.
The larger reality is that most Americans are still living in the Great Recession. Median household income continues to drop. In last week’s Washington Post-ABC poll, 75 percent rated the state of the economy as “negative” or “poor.”
Ralph Nader: Why the Silence from the Sponsors of the Superior Full Medicare for All?
With the Tea Partiers relentless attacks on each of the troubles besetting Obamacare since its complicated, computer glitch-ridden startup on October 1, 2013, the compelling question is: Why aren’t the Congressional sponsors of H.R. 676 – full Medicare for all with free choice of physician and hospital – speaking out as strongly on behalf of this far superior universal health care coverage?
There are fifty-one members of the House who openly favor the single-payer solution for many good reasons. Legislators behind H.R. 676, such as Reps. Robert Brady (D-PA), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Donna Christensen (D-VI), Judy Chu (D-CA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Danny Davis (D-IL) know that single-payer insurance with private delivery is by far more efficient, saving $400 billion a year just on administrative simplification.
Recent Comments