Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Obama's legislative proposals that threaten class power and wealth are now bottled up in Congress. In order to remedy the poor state of the healthcare and finance industries, he must overcome the blocking efforts made by the Republican-business coalition.
Not withstanding the political battles that have already begun, the proposal to pay for health care reform by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans is sound economic policy.
In spite of the predominant belief that fixing the banks will revive the economy, much of the solution actually lies elsewhere — namely, with more government spending.
Policymakers in Washington should not be fooled by the slowed increase in unemployment numbers. Rather, as the actual number of people employed continues to decline, policymakers must keep doing things that will get people back to work.
Kansas Republicans have some explaining to do in the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the doctor targeted by right-wing groups for performing late-term abortions in his clinic.
Voters appear to be leaning more conservative on social issues during the current crisis. Yet they will ultimately judge President Obama not by his stand on social issues but by whether he succeeds in pulling the country out of the recession.
Despite all he has done, the tasks that President Obama faces in fixing the economy remain daunting. If signs of real growth do not emerge soon the president’s popularity will soon begin to fall, even plummet.
Regardless of President Obama's intentions, he will end up changing American capitalism in fundamental ways—in particular, he will alter the relationship between the government and the economy.
Amidst the global economic crisis, some of the barriers toward socialist ideas are coming down. The next years will tell whether Americans are willing to move from contemplating to creating a new political system that incorporates some of these ideas.
The represents a struggle between the big banks on one side, and an angry and anxious public on the other--with the Obama administration and Congress poised somewhere in between the two. And the banks may be winning.
