U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, on Tuesday. Mr. Obama described the middle class struggles as the defining issue of our time in the speech.Julie Denesha
The most important economic speech of his presidency
Robert Reich, the former secretary of labour under Bill Clinton and curreny professor at UC Berkeley, is calling Barack Obama's speech in Kansas yesterday the "most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots." .... Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Since then we've had a president who has only reluctantly stood up to the moneyed interests Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin stood up to. ...Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012, and gain a mandate to use his second term to take on the growing inequities and game-rigging practices that have been undermining the American economy and American democracy for years."
Merkozy failed to save the euro zone
The FT's Martin Wolf in today's column: "What we have heard from Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel does not create confidence. The problem is that Germany – the euro zone's hegemon – has a plan, but that plan is also something of a blunder. The good news is that euro zone opposition will prevent its full application. The bad news is that nothing better seems to be on offer. ...The German faith is that fiscal malfeasance is the origin of the crisis. It has good reason to believe this. If it accepted the truth, it would have to admit that it played a large part in the unhappy outcome. ... This is, at its bottom, a balance of payments crisis. Resolving payments crises inside a large, closed economy requires huge adjustments, on both sides. That is truth. All else is commentary.
Who creates jobs?
From VoxEU: With millions of young people entering the global labour market each year, the question on their lips as well as policymakers' on high is whether there will be enough jobs for them. But fewer are asking who actually creates these jobs. ...This column looks at data from India suggesting that young and small firms play a vital role. It argues that entrepreneurship works; policymakers just need to support it.
Taylor rules
Nobel laureate and NYT blogger Paul Krugman smacks down Standford University professor John Taylor for misrepresenting other economists' work: ..."Worse yet, Taylor makes it seem as if Bob Hall showed that fiscal expansion is ineffective. Yet if you have actually been following Hall -- which I have, carefully -- you'd know that he has been producing extensive evidence that fiscal expansion does, indeed, work... You have to wonder why Taylor thinks he can get away with this. Does he think that other economists can't actually read research papers, and catch the misrepresentation? Or does he think of himself as writing solely for people so politicized that they don't care if he gets it wrong?"
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Rob Gilroy