USA Today

... the opposite of what we're trying to do to the economy," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ...

Several outside experts said they expect the National Economic Council, based inside the White House, to become much more of a power center under Summers than it has been in recent decades.

“It’s going to be a very, very strong position,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. LINK

For months, the Wall Street credit crisis has made many families nervous that the widespread availability of student loans will dry up. But no matter how many banks fail, there is no danger that families will be deprived access to federal student loans. None.

More than 100 banks have stopped issuing student loans, but about 2,000 continue to originate federal student loans. The government maintains two "fail-safe" systems. To date, not a single student has been unable to get a federal Stafford Loan. Every family, regardless… more

Last fall, Countrywide Financial, then the nation's largest mortgage lender, had a curious new idea --or, more precisely, an old one. No longer would it slush foreign capital through Wall Street to make subprime loans. Instead, the lender would depend entirely on deposits from savers who would finance one another's mortgages--kind of like that humble thrift institution run by George Bailey in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

Sadly, Countrywide waited too long to get back to basics and became the first major bank of 2008 to… more

Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said the economy probably needs a stimulus right now, but she urged both candidates to re-evaluate their overall budget plans.

"The level of debt we are running up," she said, "could end up undermining some of the stabilizing effects that we're trying to have on the economy." LINK

The claims: McCain said Obama "is proposing $860 billion of new spending." Obama responded by saying, "You'll hear Sen. McCain say, 'Well, he's proposing a whole bunch of new spending,' but actually I'm cutting more than I'm spending so that it will be a net spending cut."

The facts: A study by the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that McCain's tax and spending proposals would add $288 billion to $354 billion to the federal budget deficit by 2013.… more

Team Obama is an ideologically diverse group including policy veterans such as Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers -- people who served Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton at the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and White House. "A very reassuring team," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. LINK

Maya MacGuineas, director of fiscal policy with the non-partisan New America Foundation, said both candidates have made sensible suggestions. The question is what the new regulations may look like, she said, and both candidates may be wise to avoid getting too specific at this point. "The danger here is that this process gets politicized instead of leaving it up to experts," she said. "You want this to be technically driven, not politically driven." LINK

Terrorism experts Lawrence Wright and Peter Bergen have separately tracked splits between al-Zawahri and Muslim clerics. The fissures even include the man, known as Dr. Fadl, who first shaped the al-Qaeda doctrine and was once closely allied with al-Zawahri. Fadl's insistence that Muslims be uncompromising and brutal has given way to more moderation and compromise. LINK

None, though, has embraced the sort of radical change outlined in the book Grand New Party, which conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called "the best single road map of where the party should and is likely to head." In the book, 20-something authors Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam of The Atlantic magazine argue that Republicans need to address growing economic inequality and working-class insecurity with subsidies for wages, child care and health care.

"Anything like this is going to take a decade," Salam… more