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The Crisis Is Over, And We Wasted It
Rahm Emanuel reportedly has a doctrine: Never let a serious crisis go to waste. His point is a good one - vested interests usually block change across a wide range of important issues in the US, and a major financial/economic crisis provides an opportunity to bypass or breakthrough those interests in order to introduce meaningful and substantial change. Emanuel listed (from the 1:40 minute mark) five priority areas for change: health care (cost control and expansion of coverage), energy (independence and alternatives), taxes (fairness and simplicity), education (fundamental changes to effectively train the workforce), and financial regulation (transparency and accountability).
The financial crisis is abating - although the economic costs continue to mount and new problems may still appear (ask California or Ukraine). At least among the people I talk with on Capitol Hill, there is a very real sense that business is returning to usual; certainly, the lobbyists are out in force, they want what they always want, and it’s hard to see many of them as seriously weakened. How much progress have we made on any of Emanuel’s priority areas or, for that matter, along any other public policy dimension that was previously stuck? Read the rest of this entry »
Real Time With Bill Maher, Tomorrow
Tomorrow evening I’m on Bill Maher’s HBO show, as part of a three person panel with Muhammad Yunus and Jon Meacham. Bill runs a wide-ranging discussion covering pretty much anything that’s been in the news over the past week or so. With Muhammad and Jon there, I’m sure we’ll get into issues of ethics and values – including whether we have let “the profit motive” become too central in our society.
In terms of other topics related to economics, my guess is we’ll talk about: Read the rest of this entry »
Rahm’s Doctrine And Breaking Up The Banks
According to David Leonhardt, writing in today’s New York Times magazine,
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE ELECTION, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, appeared before an audience of business executives and laid out an idea that Lawrence H. Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, later described to me as Rahm’s Doctrine. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said. “What I mean by that is that it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” (Links in the quote are from the on-line original.)
Leonhardt explains how this Doctrine can be applied to issues ranging from health care costs to education, and some of this is already apparent in the fiscal stimulus details currently before Congress.
Can the same approach also guide actions regarding our deeply broken and broke financial system? There are three possible answers. Read the rest of this entry »
