Joel E Lewis

Now Thomas Friedman joins the “our government is broken and our our political parties represent the crazies” bandwagon. That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center. Say what? I write often about innovation in energy and education. But I’ve come to realize that none of [...]

A historical parallel to the current level of division and outrage over health care: “To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received [...]

FiveThirtyEight makes a good point: 4.) I’m surprised how unimportant estate and gift taxes are to the overall scheme of things. Even before the generous estate tax credit of the last few years (essentially exempting estates worth less than $3.5 million), estate and gift taxes are remarkably unimportant from a total revenues perspective. It’s obvious [...]

How Moderates think: Like Mr. Brown, Ms. Snowe said she did not think the measure went far enough, and she also protested the Democratic decision to bar any Republican amendments. But the senator, who was particularly supportive of some business-oriented provisions in the measure, said those concerns were outweighed by the need to show Americans [...]

538 has a great article on the role of moderate politicians in congress. The Bayh’s , Lieberman’s and Snowe’s of the world are moderates, in that they muddle together proposals of each side to make bastardized policy proposals that meet in the middle (legislative man-bear-pigs).   As long as they remain moderates, patching together existing proposals, [...]

Another sign of mainstream recognition of political polarization in the United States – From the Economist: The supermajority rule [60 votes in the Senate] would be no bad thing if it forced the majority party to reach out to the other side. The Democrats themselves have often been glad of it, for example to block [...]

Paul Volcker and I are really disturbed by Congress’s inability to act: VOLCKER: Capitol Hill and the Senate is dysfunctional. I mean, I’m very disturbed about the trend in the government generally and its inability to get together and do things. And I had some hopes. This is a relatively neutral subject politically. The need [...]

A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit.  Here is one taste: The Obama administration tells us that the government deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion a year for at least ten years. And that does not take into account the outlier years in the 2020s when the [...]

Note: The first publishing of this post was accidentally an unfinished draft.  This the corrected copy. The Wall Street journal asks? Was it surprising to investors that Merrill paid $3.6 billion in bonuses? This figure leaned toward the low end of estimates that had appeared in the press, and it was significantly less than the [...]

While I have been critical of the Federal Reserve (especially the Greenspan years), my beef with them has been their judgment and decision-making process. Congress, on the other hand, is a whole different matter. Its not their judgment, but rather, the fact they are owned not by the American people, but by lobbyists, and corporate [...]