All Life Is Problem Solving

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the Co-Chairs of “the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” would have us believe that a deficit and debt crisis threatening the fiscal future of the United States is upon us, that “This debt is like a cancer,” and that unless we begin to make across the board cuts […]

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In my previous three posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event, and discussed the pre-conference phase and the first four steps. These reflect a strong and consistent bias toward socializing participants into the idea that […]

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By James K. Galbraith Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0. President Obama and his economic team face a daunting challenge: how to deliver economic growth they know can only come from deficit spending, while deferring into the future the “fiscal consolidation” which is being pressed on them by practically everyone, from Peter G. Peterson to Angela […]

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In my first post analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and then began a discussion of the steps. I broke off my account in the middle of my narrative of Step Two. Primary Facilitator states […]

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On June 26th, AmericaSpeaks, an organization claiming unbiased neutrality on deficit issues, but funded by the Peter G. Peterson and other Foundations who share the Peterson view that US deficits and the National Debt are something to worry about, convened some 19 Town Meetings, and more than 40 smaller “community conversations,” all tied together through […]

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In Part One, I addressed the question of whether the AmericaSpeaks argument showing that increasing deficits, debts, and public debt-to-GDP ratios is a real problem America needs to solve make sense. I concluded that their reasoning doesn’t show there’s a real problem because they assume that interest rate levels for Government debt instruments are determined […]

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The deficit terrorists ask us to believe that the US has a deficit/national debt problem, to believe in their projections about the future, and to make certain hard choices involving spending cuts and tax increases because we believe in the likelihood of their projections coming true if we don’t act to prevent them. Tomorrow, AmericaSpeaks, […]

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This one is a deconstruction of a piece in the Detroit Free Press by a gentleman in the MSM who’s decided to join the Peter G. Peterson/Catfood Commission echo chamber. (My thanks to Sisterkenney for calling it to my attention.)

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Warren Mosler has an important forthcoming book called The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds, which is, fortunately, available right now in a pre-publication version for reading and commenting from Warren’s site. Jamie Galbraith, Warren’s friend and occasional co-author has recently written a Foreword to the book, which also can serve as a Foreword to the Modern […]

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The progressive counter-attack against the President’s emerging “austerity” political strategy and program is beginning to emerge. In the last few days, we’ve seen posts by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, Jane Hamsher, Robert Kuttner, and Dean Baker writing against the thrust by the Administration, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and […]

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