Monthly Archives: June 2011

There’s a great article in the Washington Monthly by Suzanne Mettler, 20,000 Leagues under the State, which is all about the hidden welfare state that exists in the United States.  The key graphic from the article: From the article: Over … Continue reading →

Like Brad Delong, David Dayen and others, I think it is crazy that we are even talking about cutting the deficit with unemployment so high and inflation and borrowing costs so low.  Even controlling for that, there’s something about that Wonkbook … Continue reading →

Wonkbook this morning: A bit more information has trickled out over the last few days detailing the exact state of the budget negotiations when they collapsed. Both sides, as they often said, were shooting for about $2.4 trillion in deficit … Continue reading →

To continue the discussion we started, I want to bring up another point from the Justice Policy Institute’s new report, Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies (summary). While discussing the role right-wing think … Continue reading →

If you look at the 10 states in the US that rely the most on private prisons, they incarcerate a percentage of their population in privately-owned facilities roughly equivalent to what Europe does in all their facilities. Let’s back up … Continue reading →

I just learned recently that the FTC has given a thumbs up to the Social Intelligence Corp. archiving seven years worth of people’s Facebook posts, posts that can then be used as part of their background checking service for job … Continue reading →

Jared Bernstein has a must-read post on the benefits of Full Employment for wage growth titled slack attack: When growth and income became delinked, we spent over 100 points above the line, signaling weak job markets, high unemployment, jobless recoveries, … Continue reading →

I’ve been following up on this important David Beckworth post on QE and monetary policy done by FDR in the Great Depression. Beckworth argues that the first QE policy was during the Great Depression, and it benefitted from the fact that … Continue reading →

For the monetary policy panel at Netroots Nation, I opened with the story about how the giant battle over the Bush tax cut extensions, payroll taxes and unemployment insurance from last December received (well-deserved) extensive coverage, but the FOMC battles … Continue reading →

I’m currently at Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis.  If you are there and want to say hi, shoot me an email or swing by one of my two panels: Thursday, 10:30am, Fed Up: Decoding Monetary Policy Matters with Matt Yglesias, … Continue reading →