Free Republic

One of the best-known economists in the United States says that he doesn't believe President Barack Obama will permit his country to default on its financial obligations. Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, told the Georgia Straight in an exclusive interview that it's "simply unthinkable" for the U.S. to experience an Argentina-style collapse. "Argentina is one thing," Reich said. "The United States, though, is a central pillar of the global economy. And a default would have cataclysmic consequences for the global economy. Before we got to that point, even if the Republican Party or the...

The driving force behind the folly of bombing Syria is Secretary of State John Kerry. I’m told Chuck Hegel has strong reservations, as do the Pentagon’s top generals. But Kerry has no reservations at all, and has convinced the President to stake much of his second-term presidency on it. Why? It’s possible, of course, that Kerry honestly believes that a punitive military strike against Assad is necessary, and that the benefits of such a strike would outweigh the potential costs. But I suspect something else is going on. Kerry is an intelligent man, but he has a fatal flaw. He...

Democrats and the media have accuses Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of "McCarthyism" merely for posing tough questions to and about Chuck Hagel during the latter's confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Yet a recent column by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich reveals who the real McCarthyites are in U.S. politics today, as Reich likens the Tea Party to a conspiracy "to undermine the government of the United States." Reich, who has steadfastly supported President Barack Obama's big-government, tax-and-spend agenda, wrote that the Tea Party had "infiltrated" the government at every level, and had used the budget cuts...

wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both. Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out...

Robert Reich was relieved that he was a passenger on one of the last flights to leave NYC before the airports closed on Monday. But he’s upset that the airline had “jacked up” ticket prices to $4,000 for the last flights leaving NYC for California. Even at $4,000 per ticket, the flight was oversold by 47 passengers, and the airline then paid 47 volunteers $400 each to take a later flight, “whenever that might be.” In his own words, Professor Reich explains: Assuming that the 47 extra passengers had each paid $4,000 to get onto the plane at the...

He’s back. Last night our president was articulate and forceful — in sharp contrast to his performance in the first presidential debate. He stated his beliefs. He defended his record. He told America where he wanted to take the nation in his second term. And he explained where Romney wanted to take us. For example: “Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private...

“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster. A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion. Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired. Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false...

Mitt Romney has turned into such a skilled debater that he could trounce President Barack Obama in their three head-to-head encounters in the run-up to the election, former Democratic Labor Secretary Robert Reich believes. Romney “is going to be debating somebody who is not nearly as good a debater as his reputation,” Reich tells Atlantic Magazine in its September issue. He says that under live questioning, Obama “can seem kind of wooden” and “at a loss for words.” “Even if Romney is scripted and not spontaneous, he will come across as ‘on his game,’ ” Reich tells the Atlantic. “The...

A group of prominent economists today urged President Obama and congressional leaders to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for three years. In a letter to the president and lawmakers they wrote: A higher minimum wage at this juncture will not only provide raises for low-wage workers but would provide some help on the jobs front as well. The group, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University; former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; and Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), advocate a three-step raise of 85 cents a...

For more than three years, Barack Obama has whined about having inherited a bad economy whenever data shows the consistent stagnation wrought by his economic policies. Regardless of how bad the recession is, Obamanomics has produced the worst recovery in the post-World War II period, as the data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve shows (see update below):Conservatives ran out of patience a long time ago with the “I inherited a bad economy” excuse, but it’s not just conservatives who find themselves tired of Obama's pat response. Robert Reich scolded Obama yesterday on the pages of the Huffington Post, writing that...

The economy has stalled. Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people. With only 115,000 jobs in April, the hole is...

ROBERT REICH: Get Ready For A Obama-Clinton Presidential Ticket Robert Reich Dec. 28, 2011, 7:08 PM My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President. So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton. Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that. Moreover, the economy won’t be...

With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the Republican crack-up threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP's eclipse in 1932. That's bad for America. The crack-up isn't just Romney-the-smooth versus Gingrich-the-bomb-thrower. Not just House Speaker John Boehner, who keeps making agreements he can't keep, versus House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who keeps making trouble he can't control. And not just the GOP establishment versus the Tea Partiers.The underlying conflict lies deep in the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old. As political analyst Michael...

Despite what the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney say, corporations aren’t people. (I’ll believe they are when Georgia and Texas start executing them.) The Court thinks corporations have First Amendment rights to spend as much as they want on politics, and Romney (and most of his fellow Regressives) think they need lower taxes and fewer regulations in order to be competitive.These positions are absurd on their face. By flooding our democracy with their shareholders’ money, big corporations are violating their shareholders’ First Amendment rights because shareholders aren’t consulted. They’re simultaneously suppressing the First Amendment rights of the rest of us...

Late last month, as America was ignoring the 24th anniversary of the Senate's rejection of conservative jurist Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, something extraordinary happened: New York Times columnist Joe Nocera admitted the borking of Judge Bork spawned today's toxic political culture. "(R)arely has a failed nominee had the pedigree — and intellectual firepower — of Bork," Mr. Nocera wrote. Judge Bork held conservative opinions, but none could be "fairly characterized as extreme." That didn't deter then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who denounced "'Robert Bork's America' as a place 'in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks...

ROBERT REICH: The Republican Economic Plan Is An Austerity Death-Trap Robert Reich Oct. 19, 2011, 6:25 PM Ron Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan – promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) – is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting fifteen months from now. What are they smoking? Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their...

John Boehner said Tuesday the Republicans got “90 percent of what we wanted” from the budget deal. So presumably he and his colleagues are willing to take responsibility for some 450 points of yesterday’s mammoth 513-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I’m being a bit facetious – but only a bit. It’s always dangerous to read too much into one day’s move in the stock market. As we’ve learned painfully over the last several years, Wall Street investors are not entirely rational. Yet the stock sell-off – not just yesterday’s, but that of the last days – cannot...

A friend who’s been watching the absurd machinations in Congress asked me “what happens if we don’t solve the budget crisis and we run out of money to pay the nation’s bills?” It was only then I realized how effective Republicans lies have been. That we’re calling it a “budget crisis” and worrying that if we don’t “solve” it we can’t pay our nation’s bills is testament to how successful Republicans have been distorting the truth. The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but...

After a bruising midterm election, the president moves to the political center. He distances himself from his Democratic base. He calls for cuts in Social Security and signs historic legislation ending a major entitlement program. He agrees to balance the budget with major cuts in domestic discretionary spending. He has a showdown with Republicans who threaten to bring government to its knees if their budget demands aren't met. He wins the showdown, successfully painting them as radicals. He goes on to win re-election. Barack Obama in 2012? Maybe. But the president who actually did it was Bill Clinton. [Snip] It's...

Austrian School economist Bob Murphy responds to Robert Reich's video, "The Truth About the Economy."