Economic Growth

I have an op-ed published in this week's Christian Science Monitor about Build America Bonds (BABs), a provision of the stimulus legislation that allows states and localities to issue taxable, federally-subsidized municipal bonds (as opposed to traditional, tax-exempt municipal bonds). The piece explains the details of BABs, why they've proven such an early hit, and how they could transform America's infrastructure financing.

Meanwhile, the surging popularity of this once-obscure program continues to attract commentary and analysis from major publications and around the Web. Here are some updates and new wrinkles...

With so many Americans struggling to weather the recession, attention has once again turned to the big bucks being pulled in by business titans. For example, in yesterday's Financial Times, Leo Hindery, chairman of New America's Smart Globalization Initiative, described the "then-and-now" of executive compensation:

In 1972, Reginald Jones, Jack Welch’s predecessor at General Electric...said in his maiden speech as chief executive that, while he fully respected the fact that his job was to keep GE successful on behalf of its shareholders, he had equal responsibility to employees, customers, communities and the nation. Notably, at no point in his speech did Jones identify management as a separate constituency; to him, managers were employees...

Lobbyists allied with trade unions, genuine committee bipartisan, intra-party executive-legislative infighting: is Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) trying to pass his $500bn transportation bill in an alternate universe?

We've written recently about the ongoing fight between the Obama Administration and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (T&I) over whether to pass a brand-new bill this year or patch 2005's SAFETEA-LU for another 18 months. The gist: T&I Chairman Oberstar wants new legislation; Obama's Department of Transportation wants to wait. That much is unchanged, but it seems like intriguing new wrinkles are emerging every day...

The US and EU will bring a case against China at the WTO for Chinese export quotas on raw materials. Last week we wrote that this trade dispute may be coming and suggested that there are bigger fish to fry in the US-China trade relationship.

But let's take a closer look at the day's news. The statement of the US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, certainly indicates the administration believes larger trade issues are at hand. His speech this afternoon:

[Restricting raw material exports] is not okay in specific cases like the one we are raising today. It is certainly not okay as an underpinning of a country's overall industrial policy regime...

 

 

 

 

Things are getting very interesting at the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (T&I). Congress and the Obama Administration seem to be at loggerheads over how to proceed with transportation legislation in the short run--and how to pay for it in the long run.

To bring you up to speed (no transportation pun intended): the current legislation, 2005's $286.4bn SAFETEA-LU (an earmark extravaganza that dictates the feds' highway and public transit spending for five years), expires on September 30. T&I Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is committed to passing a brand new bill before then...

There's a lot of attention being paid to unemployment nowadays, and rightly so--after all, as we've noted in a recent report (and will further discuss at a Capitol Hill event next week), unemployment is likely to be the most toxic and persistent legacy of this recession.

But over the past few days, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released new data speaking to other dimensions of this recession that make life a lot more difficult even for those people who do have jobs--and further put economic recovery at risk...

A new report prepared by the Economic Development Research Group on behalf of the American Public Transportation Association estimates the job creation impact of government spending on public transportation (hat tip SF Examiner). It's a very succinct and readable document, but here are some key takeaway points...

On the slideshow on our front page, you'll find a snazzy looking image that leads to a mini-site based on The American Social Contract: A Promise to Fulfill, a report by New American Contract's Michael Lind with David McNamee. We felt that the report warranted it's own special subsite because of it's broad scope and comprehensive insight into the U.S. social contract--all the way from the beginnings of our republic to today.

There's a lot of good stuff in there, but I'd like to point out the five elements that Lind and McNamee pull out as comprising the foundations of what we commonly call "the social contract," and how they relate to modern day political issues...

Yesterday we premiered a new report titled Not Out of the Woods: A Report on the Jobless Recovery Underway. The paper came on the heels of a commentary by Leo Hindery, chairman of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, on "Job Solutions for Our Jobless Recovery."

All of which begs the question: what exactly is a "jobless recovery"? In the report published yesterday, I discuss this very topic, and in some respects, it's a pretty straightforward concept. A jobless recovery is essentially an economic recovery that lacks job growth; in a jobless recovery, the labor market remains weak, and relatively high unemployment persists, well after the 18 months that it usually takes such indicators to rebalance themselves after downturns...

What many are calling the 'green shoots', are actually imposing higher costs for borrowing, threatening to choke-off a recovery. For average Americans, the higher costs of borrowing has led to higher mortgage payments. To compound these problems, commodity prices have risen, causing American more pain at the gas pump.

Gas prices have risen dramatically since the beginning of the year and reached an average price of $2.67/gallon. Assuming prices stay at their current level, Americans will spend about $1.15 more per gallon than they did from 1997-2005. This will be an added cost of $158 billion if we consume the same amount of gas as we did in 2008. These added costs will put a damper on consumer spending, particularly for lower-income Americans who spend a higher percentage of their wages on gasoline and transportation...