"A Rapid Unraveling Of The Economy"

Economic Policy Institute president Lawrence Mishel puts in context the January 9, 2009 unemployment report, which recorded an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent. "We are facing an economic catastrophe," he says in this interview, because of the "anything-goes" economic policies of the Bush administration, which relied on top-end tax cuts that did not succeed in generating job growth or working-class wage growth even in good times. Mishel makes the case against a continuation of tax-cut-oriented conservative economic policies.