economic policy

It's rare to find a book on economic policy that is so well written for the general public without sacrificing first rate analysis. I would recommend it for undergraduates and for anyone who wants to get quickly to the heart of some very tough issues: fiscal stimulus; monetary policy; tax reform; trade imbalances; oil dependence; runaway entitlement spending; health reform; and preventing the next financial crisis. When a book is this quick a read, you often don't come away which much, but Seeds of Destruction pays big dividends and left me looking for more. You come away understanding the key drivers of economic growth without having to juggle equations or IS/LM graphs. They cut through a lot of extraneous issues and focus on the keys to good economic policymaking.

I give President Obama high praise for the parts of his speech this evening where he chastised his own party in the Congress for its ineffectiveness and for telling the Senate Republicans that if they are going to insist on supermajorities to get any policy passed, then they are going to have to share in the responsibility for governing.  Good for him.  Nobody's perfect, but I cannot help but think that the conduct of the Congress in recent years, and the Senate in particular, would be enough to make a Founding Father vomit.

Despite the unusual circumstances of January 2010, much of the speech was the standard fare in January -- everybody should go to college, everybody should be healthy, the environment should be clean, people should save for retirement, and I've got the token programs in my budget to give me the credibility to pay lip service to it.  And, new this year, we will do all of these token programs and giveaways while insisting that we will freeze non-defense discretionary spending at current levels.

One item that stood out as different was the acknowledgement that we are on our way to export-led growth, if we are to have growth at all. 

In a front page story in today's Washington Post about Alan Greenspan's about-to-be-published book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Bob Woodward says that Greenspan lashes out at George W. Bush, the Bush administration, and congressional Republicans for terrible economic stewardship.