Dear William,

I guess JKG is off the list with this slap in the face to Obama's special commission. Statement to the Commission on Deficit Reduction James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin June 30, 2010 Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. I am a professional economist, but I have served in a political role, as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress. I am offering this statement on behalf of Americans for Democratic Action, an organization co-founded in 1949 by (among others) Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr., and Ronald Reagan. Accordingly I would like to begin with a political comment. 1. Clouds Over the Work of the Commission. Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. In this respect, there are four major issues. First, most of your meetings are secre...

With our effort to oust him underway Timmy Geithner is hitting the public circuit in defense of his leadership. His poorly titled and elusive piece in the NY Times . "Welcome to the Recovery" raised more questions at a time when we need answers not cheerleaders. Not so from Marshall Auerback. The Real Reason Banks Aren’t Lending via New Deal 2.0 Banks won’t lend until the American people are creditworthy again — and that takes full employment. Our Treasury Secretary has conceded that it is still a “tough economy” for most Americans, and warned it’s possible the unemployment rate will go up for a couple of months before it comes down. Given the constellation of recent economic data that has come out, Tim Geithner is probably correct. The US economy is showing signs of slowing, as the fiscal stimulus is dissipating and spending contractions at the state and local government level increasingly undermine the injections from the federal sphere. Worse, it appears that much of the...