Christian Science Monitor

This week's G-20 summit is essentially an echo chamber for the world's wealthy to talk macrofinance. The world economy might rebound more quickly if they listen to what the poor have to say about microfinance.

Remember fieldtrips? All 535 members of Congress should take one this week to Room 675 of the County Courthouse in Philadelphia. Doing so would bust some myths surrounding the "cram down" legislation – now stalled in the Senate – that would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce payments on troubled mortgages.

That’s the view Jedediah Purdy offers in A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom, his erudite, topical, thought-provoking exploration of the history of what it means to be free in America. ...

The Obama budget would make the tax code "far more progressive," that is, taxing the rich more than the middle class or poor, states the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It would allow the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for richer Americans to ...

... but because politicians devote so much time to it – and the media does – it’s become a laugh line on late night television,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington. ...

Picture the scene: a dignified Ted Kennedy stands beside President Barack Obama on a brisk, late winter day in the Rose Garden. Mr. Obama laments the events that caused him to withdraw the nomination of his anointed healthcare-reform czar, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, as Health and Human Services Secretary. Reaching back to the lofty rhetoric of his campaign, he implores his audience to look past his own lapse in judgment and seize the opportunity to implement sweeping national reform that puts health insurance within… more

The economic stimulus package just passed by the House contains much to jump-start our economy in the next few years. And congressional moves to expand Medicare eligibility and healthcare for children (through SCHIP) are commendable. But these steps still leave largely unaddressed the most fundamental long-term threat to economic security that President Barack Obama vowed to tackle during the campaign: our crumbling framework of medical financing.

Jim Pinkerton, an adviser to Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign and veteran of past GOP White Houses, began his comments at the forum by asserting that “on competence, the Republican Party deserved to lose” last November. But he disagrees about the lack of parallels between now and the late 1970s. Pointing to a chart showing an explosion in the money supply in 2008, he predicted massive inflation, and thus, a return to GOP economic principles.

"Ideally, they should be doing the heavy pulling," says Sherle Schwenninger, an economic policy expert at the New America Foundation in New York. ...

Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee included in Christian Science Monintor's list of best nonfiction books this year.

Quote Christian Science Monitor: "Award-winning science journalist Shannon Brownlee analyzes another phase of the US healthcare crisis: patients who are overtreated."