Media

As my colleague David Callahan discussed here last week, the current issue of The Atlantic includes an article written by Frank Partnoy and Jesse Eisenger entitled “What’s Inside America’s Banks.” The authors make the point that the financial health of the big banks is, at best, obscure because of the inadequacy of financial statement disclosure. This is, without doubt, an accurate criticism of the mega-banks that dominate the financial system.

For every five workers who were hired in the past three months, one was laid off by government. 

The public sector lost another 13,000 jobs in December, bringing the post-recession job loss total for federal, state, and local governments to more than 600,000. Those job losses — many of which have hit teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials — have had a devastating impact on the economic recovery.

Given his long record of climate advocacy, John Kerry’s nomination for Secretary of State is a sign that climate change may receive more attention in the second Obama Administration. In addition to co-sponsoring a cap-and-trade bill in the Senate, Kerry made it a point in his presidential campaign to deride the Bush Administration’s lack of belief in climate change.

In his post-mortem on the fiscal cliff negotiations, David Leonhardt argues that President Obama’s incentives throughout were to reduce inequality. In that light, he writes, the deal was a success.

New York -- In response to the late night passage of a tax deal by the US House of Representatives, Miles Rapoport, president of the national nonpartisan public policy organization Demos released the following statement:

"It is in the nature of a complicated bipartisan agreement that it looks very different depending on what prism you look at it through.  Two elements are critically important: what is actually in the bill that passed and the President will sign, and how its passage ‘sets up’ the future fiscal debates.

It is in the nature of a complicated bipartisan agreement that it looks very different depending on what prism you look at it through.  Two elements are critically important: what is actually in the bill that passed and the president will sign, and how its passage ‘sets up’ the future fiscal debates.

This is the headline we should really be seeing after last night's fiscal cliff deal.

As a result of the deal, the bulk of the Bush tax cuts will remain permanently in place, the AMT will be eliminated, and Obama's stimulus tax cuts, mainly aimed at the working poor, will live on for another five years (as well as stimulus tax cuts for business.)