new deal

President Barack Obama hasn't given up. Having seen Congressional Republicans dash his hopes of passing his American Jobs Act wholesale, Obama is now seeking to get his bill through in what he calls "bite-sized pieces." The legislation has reignited a decades-old debate about jobs creation through infrastructure plans.

The "Great Recession" is over -- at least officially. A recession, by definition, is two consecutive quarters of falling gross domestic product, and recent figures show that the GDP rose 3.5% in the third quarter this year. Phew. So why don't we feel better? For too many of us, it feels like...

As America's unemployment rate edges closer to 10 percent and the phrase "jobless recovery" becomes part of everyday conversation, the House of Representatives voted late Tuesday to extend unemployment benefits for thirteen more weeks in the 29 states where the unemployment rate is over 8.5...

Even with growing talk of the recession's end, unemployment continues to rise, leading many critics of the Obama administration to ask when, exactly, the much-touted stimulus jobs will arrive. Having cast their vote for a big government solution, even some of the President's supporters are...

You know, there have been so many errors -- in some cases they've been deliberate distortions -- about the impact of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's innovative New Deal policies on the U.S. economy, that we should take a moment to analyze the facts of history. Accordingly, we cite the late, great...

A little dose of advice and enlightenment from a good friend and colleague in Paris, to the economic conservatives: Quit while you're behind. Quit now. My friend, who was born in and lived most of his adult life in France before moving to the US with his family to establish dual residency, once...

The nicest thing you can say about Washington's new economic bipartisanship is that it's a work in progress. President Obama's $787 billion fiscal stimulus package, signed by the president today, could have contained fewer pet programs, but at the same time Republicans in the House and Senate...

One of the most poignant lines in Max Ehrmann's Desiderata is the advice that one should "Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time." While the past few years have made that advice seem old-fashioned, the recent economic downturn...

Although die-hard conservative apologists sometimes argue that FDR actually prolonged the Great Depression, most historians and economists agree that the New Deal reduced both the severity and length of the country's economic doldrums. In fact, while World War II generally gets the credit for...