Progressive Opinion

propublica.org — The Obama administration is billing today's $25 billion agreement between most states and five banks that engaged in flawed or deceptive practices as a big win for struggling homeowners. Most of the money in the settlement isn't a penalty, or a fine levied on the banks. Instead, the biggest slice of the settlement will be money banks put toward principal reduction -- reducing the amount owed by struggling or underwater borrowers. (Banks will also put smaller amounts toward refinancing and other ways of helping people get back in control of spiraling debt.) Getting a break on their mortgages could help the millions of homeowners who owe more on their home than it is worth. But many of them won't qualify — thanks to government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

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prospect.org — The long-awaited mortgage deal between the federal government, 49 state attorneys general, and five big banks that was announced Thursday is pretty thin gruel, but it could have been a lot worse. The Obama administration dearly wanted this deal so that it could demonstrate greater help for homeowners and, in turn, relieve the damaging impact of the housing collapse on the economic recovery. The administration’s main programs to date, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program and later the Home Affordable Refinance Program have been notable failures because they were voluntary to the banks. The actual relief under this latest deal is a drop in the bucket measured against the $700 billion by which mortgages are underwater. The best thing that can be said for the deal is that it could be a down payment for much deeper homeowner relief, if state attorneys general and the newly activated federal prosecutorial task force get serious about bigger criminal and civil suits against banks.

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nytimes.com — Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied hard data on the widening income gap. And the myth of a classless society has been exposed: Among rich countries, America stands out as the place where economic and social status is most likely to be inherited. So you knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals. But is it really all about morals? No, it’s mainly about money.

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washingtonpost.com — Republicans couldn’t stop President Obama from installing Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But they hope they can rein the bureau in by passing legislation. The House GOP is now moving forward with bills that would remove the CFPB director from overseeing the Federal Deposit Insurance Company and allow Congress to directly control its funding every year. The bills are DOA in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But the GOP’s new bills provide a clear guide to what is likely to happen to the CFPB if Republicans take full control of Congress and/or the White House.

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prospect.org — The GOP presidential primary has offered some odd debates on who cares about the "very poor" and whether there should be a "safety net" or a "trampoline" to help people get out of poverty. Meanwhile, in Kansas, it seems Governor Sam Brownback is hoping to dig a bigger hole for the poor fall into. Between his tax plans and his approaches to school funding, Brownback's agenda overtly boosts the wealthy and makes things harder for the poor. While many liberals speculate this to be a secret goal, Brownback is hardly making a secret of his agenda.

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progressive.org — This week, conservatives will be gathering in Washington, D.C., to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Dubbed “Mardi Gras for the Right” by one rightwing reporter, the three-day festival “celebrates everything conservatives hold dear, including free-market capitalism.” Conservatives hold Wisconsin dear, as two Republican Badgers are giving keynote speeches. Representative Paul Ryan from Janesville takes the stage Thursday night, while Governor Scott Walker addresses the crowd on Friday night.

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jaredbernsteinblog.com — As others have noted, conservatives who’d like bash the President on the economy are having an awfully hard time right now, as the recovery proceeds apace.  So, they’re stuck with “yeah, things are getting better, but if we were in charge, they’d be even better!” This, of course, is the flipside of a rap with which I’m intimately familiar: “sure, things are bad — but without our actions, they’d be even worse!” Neither are convincing to most people, because most people don’t engage in the economist’s counterfactual: the path the economy would have taken absent your interventions.  Thing is, I know and believe my counterfactual.  It comes from tried and true modeling based on the historical relationships of how advanced economies respond to stimulus. What I don’t get is their counterfactual. Other than unconvincingly waving hands, muttering how things should be better, how the EPA and OSHA rules are killing businesses, yada, yada — let’s see some analysis.

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nytimes.com — When Facebook goes public later this year, Mark Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth $5 billion of the $28 billion that his ownership stake will be worth. The $5 billion he will receive upon exercising those options will be treated as salary, and Mr. Zuckerberg will have a tax bill of more than $2 billion, quite possibly making him the largest taxpayer in history. He is expected to sell enough stock to pay his tax. But how much income tax will Mr. Zuckerberg pay on the rest of his stock that he won’t immediately sell? He need not pay any. Instead, he can simply use his stock as collateral to borrow against his tremendous wealth and avoid all tax. Why is this? Our tax system is based on the concept of “realization.” Individuals are not taxed until they actually sell property and realize their gains. A drastic change is necessary to fix this fundamental flaw. The fix is called mark-to-market taxation.

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newdeal20.org — Last week’s job numbers were generally positive. Now if those numbers pick up steam, if the housing market begins to recover, if Europe doesn’t sink the U.S. economy, if the situation in the Middle East and especially Iran doesn’t cause oil prices to spike, and if we don’t immediately disrupt government spending through premature austerity, we could see some major job growth in 2012.
What about those who still have a job? We focus on the unemployed for many good reasons. But the economy also has major problems for those with jobs. Personally, many friends of mine have discussed how they want to move on and quit their current jobs and were putting in the energy to find new ones. They’ve mostly failed and are taking it as a personal failure. Except it’s less a personal failure than a macroeconomic one.

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washingtonpost.com — The January jobs report — 243,000 jobs added — was greeted with widespread relief. The economists over at the Wall Street Journal were virtually giddy. The best news of the day was not just the upside surprise of the jobs numbers, but the reaction of President Obama. He joined commentators in hailing the good news: “the economy is growing stronger. The recovery is speeding up.” But he wasn’t proclaiming “recovery winter,” a reference to the ruinous White House plan to campaign on the recovery in the summer of 2010, after prematurely turning to deficit reduction in the State of the Union that year. Instead, the president greeted the jobs report by pushing for more action. “We must do everything in our power to keep it [jobs growth] going.” This stance is both good policy and good politics.

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