Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren

False Choice

Posted on December 21, 2019 by | 5 comments

By James Kwak

The scene: Two well-dressed, fully employed people sitting at a table in the chic café at their workplace.

Martha: Do you like your health plan?

George: I love it.

Martha: How much do you pay for your plan?

George: About $550 per month.*

Martha: Do you have a deductible?

George: I have a $1,000 deductible for my whole family.

Martha: What about co-payments?

George: I have to pay 20% of the cost for hospital stays and outpatient surgery.

Martha: What if you just want to see the doctor?

George: I pay $25 to see my primary care physician, and $40 to see a specialist.

Martha: Can you see anyone you want?

George: I pay more if I see people out of network, but the insurer still pays something.

Martha: I’m thinking about switching to the new plan they’re offering. Have you heard about it?

George: No. What is it?

Martha: Well, it covers everything, including vision and dental. And you can see anyone you want.

George: How much does it cost?

Martha: Nothing. There are no premiums and no deductibles or co-payments. Well, you may have co-payments for prescription drugs, but there’s an annual maximum of $200.

George thinks.

George: I think I’ll keep my health plan. I just like it.

End scene.

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The Crisis of the Democratic Establishment

Posted on December 14, 2019 by | 4 comments

By James Kwak

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. On a host of issues, it is clear what we stand for and how we differ from the Republicans: minority rights, abortion, immigration, gun control, climate change, the importance of facts, and, of course, whether or not the president is above the law. On economic issues, however, the picture is not so clear. Elizabeth Warren’s speech at St. Anselm’s College on Thursday is an attempt to fix that problem—and also a shot across the bow of the Democratic elite. 

With each passing year, the widening gulf between the very rich and everyone else becomes more and more apparent. Even after ten years of economic expansion and with unemployment at historic lows, working-age adults in the bottom half of the income distribution make less than they did a full two generations ago, while the very rich now count their wealth with twelve digits instead of eleven. Yet the Democratic establishment insists that we must stay the course, and shared prosperity will be just around the corner. 

Elizabeth_Warren_Manchester_NH_October_2016

Elizabeth Warren campaigning for the Democratic establishment back in 2016 when everyone got along. Photo: Tim Pierce (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Ever since the rise of the New Democrats in the 1980s and the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the party’s power brokers have preached the gospel of “growth and opportunity.” (This is the story I tell in the first chapter of my new book, Take Back Our Party, available for free at The American Prospect.)  All good things come from the private sector; government’s role is to help markets function efficiently, create the conditions for private sector growth, and help people participate in those markets. Hence welfare reform, financial deregulation, and Obamacare, among other things. Hence also the intense, coordinated assaults on Bernie Sanders in 2016 and both Sanders and Warren today.

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The Importance Of Elizabeth Warren

Posted on November 8, 2012 by | 49 comments

By Simon Johnson

One of the most important results on Tuesday was the election of Elizabeth Warren as United States senator for Massachusetts. Her victory matters not only because it helps the Democrats keep control of the Senate but because Ms. Warren has a proven track record of speaking truth to authority on financial issues – both to officials in Washington and to powerful people on Wall Street.

During the campaign, Ms. Warren’s opponent and his allies made repeated attempts to portray her as antibusiness. In the most bizarre episode, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS ran an ad that contended that she favored bailing out large Wall Street banks. All of this was misdirection and disinformation.

Ms. Warren has long stood for transparency and accountability. She has insisted that consumers need protection relative to financial products – when the customer cannot understand what is really on offer, this encourages bad behavior by some companies. If this behavior spreads sufficiently, the entire market can become contaminated – damaging the entire macroeconomy, exactly as we have seen in the last decade. Continue reading →

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Responsible Populism

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 25 comments

By Simon Johnson

“Populism” is a loaded term in modern American politics. On the one hand, it conveys the idea that someone represents (or claims to represent) the broad mass of society against a privileged elite. This is a theme that plays well on the right as well as the left – although they sometimes have different ideas about who is in that troublesome “elite.”

At the same time, populism is often used in a pejorative way – as a putdown, implying “the people” want irresponsible things that would undermine the fabric of society or the smooth functioning of the economy.

In Latin America, for example, there is a long tradition of populists falling into bed with a corrupt political elite, and the results invariably include irresponsible macroeconomic policies and various kinds of financial disaster (see “The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America,” edited by Rudiger Dornbush and Sebastian Edwards).

In North America, however, the populist tradition has proved much more constructive. More than 100 years ago, hot-button issues included direct election of senators and a federal income tax. None of these demands seem irresponsible today, and achieving those goals through constitutional amendments in the run-up to 1914 in no way jeopardized American prosperity. Continue reading →

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Karl Rove’s Latest Attack On Elizabeth Warren

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | 47 comments

By Simon Johnson

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has another ad out attacking Elizabeth Warren (video here).   This is beyond ludicrous – the ad attempts to blame Ms. Warren for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and for bank bailouts.  The principle here seems to be that when the truth cannot be slanted in a way you want, just ignore the facts and go all out for disinformation.

I count at least five misrepresentations in the ad, and I suggest the following corrections: Continue reading →

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Wall Street v. Elizabeth Warren

Posted on November 10, 2011 by | 137 comments

By Simon Johnson

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group has launched the first attack ad against Elizabeth Warren, presumably because she is now running hard for the Senate in Massachusetts.  This ad is not a big surprise, but the line that Mr. Rove takes could well backfire.

The ad states, “we need jobs, not radical theories and protests,” so we can break the argument down into three separate parts.

First, who destroyed more than 8 million jobs in the United States – and plunged us into the deepest and longest lasting recession since the 1930s?  Surely this was not Ms. Warren, who was just a law school professor, in the run-up to 2008.

Mr. Rove is opening the blame game and this is going to go badly for his presumed supporters – the largest banks on Wall Street that took excessive risks, paid their top people well, and then blew themselves up at great cost to the American taxpayer.  By all means, let us have a conversation about jobs and the history of job losses in the United States; “too big to fail” banks do not look good in this context. Continue reading →

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Nominate Elizabeth Warren – Provide The Pecora Hearings We Need

Posted on May 4, 2011 by | 44 comments

By Simon Johnson

Ms. Warren is helping get the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) off the ground and remains the leading contender to become its formal head (subject to Senate confirmation).  She summarizes her substantive agenda this way,

We’re trying to make these markets transparent, which makes it easier for community banks to compete both with large financial institutions and with their nonbank competitors.”

She should now be nominated to the CFPB position.  There will be strong Republican opposition and some Democrats who are close to the financial sector may be lukewarm.  But a public hearing on her case represents our best opportunity to experience a modern version of the Pecora Hearings – the Senate Banking Committee hearings in the 1930s that laid bare the inner (and rotten) workings of the biggest financial firms (see Michael Perino’s book on Pecora for details).

These hearings would represent a major step forward towards forging a new consensus regarding how to really establish markets (as opposed to the crazy government subsidy schemes that predominate).  In addition, the administration would win a big victory with Ms. Warren’s confirmation. Continue reading →

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