Thomas Frank

The GOP's Feigned Outrage

It takes chutzpah to protest what you've created.

The Tilting Yard: Gangs of D.C.

Power is sexy in the nation's capital.

Republicans vs. Bureaucrats

You can't starve government and blame it too.

Let's Move Their Cheese

We can get better bank management for a fraction of the cost.

Digby:Panic Artists

I have been desperate for someone other than bloggers to say this for years. Here's Richard Clark:

[L]istening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate.

Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment

By Timothy R. Homan

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe.

“While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”

U.S. minimum wage hike a stimulus to economy: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A higher U.S. minimum wage is providing a cushion to the economy when it is most needed, according to a report released on Thursday.

The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think-tank based in Washington, said recent rises in the minimum wage have acted as a "stealth stimulus," preventing the worst recession in generations from spiraling out of control.

Paul Krugman: The Big Inflation Scare

Suddenly it seems as if everyone is talking about inflation. Stern opinion pieces warn that hyperinflation is just around the corner. And markets may be heeding these warnings: Interest rates on long-term government bonds are up, with fear of future inflation one possible reason for the interest-rate spike.

But does the big inflation scare make any sense? Basically, no — with one caveat I’ll get to later. And I suspect that the scare is at least partly about politics rather than economics.

First things first. It’s important to realize that there’s no hint of inflationary pressures in the economy right now. Consumer prices are lower now than they were a year ago, and wage increases have stalled in the face of high unemployment. Deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger.