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Rendezvous With Inertia
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
"This generation," Franklin D. Roosevelt said of his contemporaries, "has a rendezvous with destiny." |
The Nationalization Option
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
You might think that having anted up $173 billion of our own money, we taxpayers would have some leverage at AIG, now that we own 80 percent of the shares. You might think that when chief executive Edward Liddy, a holdover appointee of Hank Paulson's, told Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that he had just mailed $165 million of our money as bonuses to the geniuses at the firm's financial products unit -- who probably did more on a per-banker basis to destroy global capitalism than any other kindred group -- that Geithner, upon hearing this news, would have responded, "Liddy, you're fired."
Building a Better Capitalism
Thursday, March 12, 2009
So what kind of capitalism shall we craft? Now that the market fundamentalism to which we've adhered for the past 30 years has -- by its own criterion of increasing shareholder value -- totally failed? Now that Alan Greenspan has proclaimed himself "shocked" that "the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity" proved to be an illusion?
Who You Calling Socialist?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
"We are all socialists now," proclaims Newsweek. We are creating "socialist republics" in the United States, says Mike Huckabee, adding, on reflection, that "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." We are witnessing the Obama-era phenomenon of "European socialism transplanted to Washington," says Newt Gingrich.
Another Star in Chicago
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
In March of 2004, a few days before the Illinois Democratic senatorial primary, I wrote a column for this page headlined "A Bright Hope in Illinois." It was, I believe, the first column for a daily newspaper outside Illinois devoted to a rising young pol named Barack Obama. Bolstered by polling that showed Obama to be the clear leader in the race, I fearlessly predicted that he'd become Illinois' next senator and quoted the assessment of Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic member of Congress from Chicago's Gold Coast district, that Obama would "march right onto the national stage and the international stage."
The Dysfunctional Duo
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
We are hemorrhaging jobs just now, but by historic standards, unemployment may look a little low. The official unemployment rate (which understates actual unemployment, to be sure) is at 7.6 percent, a far cry from the 10 percent-plus during the downturn of the early 1980s. In those years, Midwestern manufacturing shed more jobs than it is shedding today. Where's the comparable unemployment now?
Capitalist Punishment
Friday, February 6, 2009
We are in some ways still a nation of Puritans, and we don't much cotton to people who can't take care of themselves and end up sponging off our generosity. We demand that welfare recipients do an honest day's work for their checks. And now, since President Obama laid down the law Wednesday, we demand that the guys who ran our banking system into the ground abide by our pay scales in return for our bailing them out.
The New Landonists
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The leader of the Republican Party was fulminating against the Democratic president's programs. All that government spending, and yet, he said, "the nation has not made the durable progress, either in reform or recovery, that we had the right to expect." The problem was that the president didn't trust the market to right the economy: "The energies of the American economic system will remedy the ravages of depression," he argued.
Money-Changing and Debt-Swapping May Have Helped a Few, But was Detrimental to Many
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
As Barack Obama looks back to Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address -- the only other such address that came smack in the middle of an economic meltdown -- I hope he pays special heed to Roosevelt's words on America's bankers, who then as now had plunged the nation into an economic abyss.
Harold Weighs in on the Recent Inauguration
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Had yesterday's ceremony been merely an inauguration in a time of national crisis, one in which the president signaled fundamental departures in the nation's conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, those departures would have been the big news.
Harold Discusses How Currency Manipulation Has Helped Chinese Imports and Hurt American Exports
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A few months ago, Robert Cassidy found himself pondering whether trade actually benefited the American economy. "I couldn't prove it," he says.
A Page From the Hoover Playbook
Sunday, January 7, 2009
The Big Bailout Lessons
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Destroying What the UAW Built
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Far from a narrow institution, the United Auto Workers created America's middle class.
Read more of Harold's articles » |
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Where Are the Workers?
March 4, 2009
Union organizing is an increasingly global, top-down effort. But card-check legislation could return employees to their central place in the process. |
Disunite There
February 27, 2009
UNITE HERE is splitting apart in a bitter civil war that pits the UNITE side against the HERE side in a vicious, ugly fight. Worse, this battle involves some of the savviest and most dedicated union leaders and staffers ever to work in American labor.
A Condensed History of Labor Since the 1960s
February 27, 2009
The labor movement faced few extraordinary struggles during the second half of the 20th century. Now, an intra-union conflict is set to be the most dramatic clash in decades.
The Ghost of Democratic Agenda
February 13, 2009
Echoes of another liberal turning point were felt at last week's Thinking Big conference.
End of the Divorce?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Union presidents move to reunite a divided labor movement.
A Global New Deal
Tuesday, December 15, 2008
The next New Deal won't work if it's only American. Fixing our economy will require fixing international systems.
Hilda Solis is Great
Thursday, December 18, 2008
What does Rep. Hilda Solis, Barack Obama’s selection for secretary of labor, bring to the job? Only a record of passionate commitment to working people, a high level of political smarts, and some genuine displays of raw guts that could make her a star of American liberalism.
The Reformer and the Racketeer
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Obama is not the first president to come from a corrupt political world. Voters understand that reformers, by definition, emerge from places in need of reform.
The Case for Keeping the Big Three Out of Bankruptcy
Monday, November 24, 2008
Whatever the moral claim of UAW members and retirees to their paychecks and pensions, it's their sheer number that requires the government to keep the Big Three, for now, out of bankruptcy court.
Read more of Harold's articles » |
Harold Meyerson of The Washington Post on Denver, how Obama can broaden his base, and a look back to the Democratic Convention 40 years ago. 
Harold’s remarks during the American Prospect’s and the Campaign for America’s Future’s Failure of Conservatism Conference on May 3, 2007
The American Prospect magazine and the AFL-CIO hosted a panel discussion in honor of David Sirota's new book, "Hostile Takeover" on Tuesday, May 9, 2006. Watch Harold Meyerson's remarks.
