Progressive Opinion

truthout.org — It's amazing how downright ebullient President Bill Clinton was at that signing ceremony on November 12, 1999 for the law that repealed the Glass-Steagall financial regulations. Those restricting, anti-competitive Depression era laws were finally behind us. Awesome. Fast-forward to now and most of us know how devastatingly expensive that signature was for the American public.

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thenation.com — Washington is experiencing a rare and disorienting moment. Big ideas for financial reform that have languished for years are suddenly gaining momentum. Instead of taxing folks to clean up after reckless Wall Street bankers, why not tax Wall Street? Instead of tolerating behemoths regarded as "too big to fail," why not break them up before they do more damage to the country? The fact that these and other unsanctioned propositions are in play and even proposed by respectable figures indicates how deeply the established order has been rattled by the financial crisis. It also demonstrates that members of Congress who bailed out the bankers with public money are quite terrified of voter retribution in the next election.

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huffingtonpost.com — While financial markets believe the great recession is over, millions of Americans continue to struggle. Unemployment is 10.2 percent and the more inclusive measure, underemployment, is at 17.5 percent. America's jobs crisis is both a short-term and long-term problem. Therefore, the Obama Administration faces both a tactical problem and a strategic challenge. Citizens need to have jobs as soon as possible but a sustainable recovery requires restructuring of the economy.

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prospect.org — Forget making everyone healthy and saving the polar bears. If Democrats can't solve the jobs problem, next year's elections will be an uphill battle.

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thenation.com — If Wall Street wants really to win back public respect, there is a more substantial gift it can make that does not involve money. Goldman Sachs and the other banking behemoths can take their foot off the Congress and free servile politicians to enact true financial reforms. Call off your lobbyists, let democracy function in behalf of the public interest, not yours.

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robertreich.blogspot.com — The Fed and the Treasury have, in effect, placed a huge bet on a recovery driven by asset prices. That's a bad bet. The great disconnect between the stock market and jobs is pushing stock prices way out of line with the real economy. This isn't sustainable.

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inthesetimes.com — Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has given Americans a glimpse of the ugly truth about their future job prospects. Simply put, Americans — from blue-collar manufacturing workers to white-collar office employees — won't be needed as much in the future.

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newyorker.com — Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked. The government doesn’t make people go into debt, of course. It just nudges them in that direction.

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inthesetimes.com — The big banks are back, larger than ever, with profits and stock prices soaring and huge bonuses expected—thanks to taxpayers and the federal government. That might seem like unabashed good news, but it’s not. And the rosy impression that the financial system has recovered strengthens the industry’s hand in blocking efforts to prevent another, possibly worse crisis from hitting in the near future.

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truthdig.com — Why is Barack Obama allowing some retreads from the Clinton era who went on to great riches on Wall Street to set economic policy for his administration? The fatal hallmark of this president’s financial policy is that it is being designed by the very people whose previous legislative efforts created the mess that enriched them while impoverishing the nation, and they now want more of the same.

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