The Nation

Interestingly, Steve Coll of the New America Foundation, who’s long been a skeptic about the usefulness of talking to the Taliban, says in the latest issue of The New Yorker that the United States is foolish not to support talks: “Whether talks succeed or fail, it’s hard to understand why the US would refuse to even try.” ...

By the fall, Shahzad had quit his job and flown to Pakistan, where, during his five-month visit, there were thirty-one US drone attacks, almost all targeted at the North Waziristan sanctuary of the TTP, Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network. Interestingly, a drone strike on February 2—the day before Shahzad arrived back in the States—was the only recent attack that has caused a large number of nonmilitant, and possibly civilian casualties, according to the New America Foundation database.

Until last week, I'd never heard of "IBGYBG." But during the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' eye-opening hearings into ratings agency malfeasance, former Moody's senior credit officer Richard Michalek introduced me to it while testifying about the perverse incentives that dominated the industry. On the investment bank side, he said, bankers were looking to score the one-time fee from whatever securitization deal they were asking the agency to rate, and move on to the next deal.

A year and a half after an economic earthquake shook the world, the so-called experts are still trying to figure out what happened and how to move forward. In the shadows of that confusion, new economic models are beginning to find traction.

By now, it hardly counts as news when a prominent member of America's ruling class refuses to take responsibility for the havoc and misery his actions have wrought. In post-crisis America, dissembling and baroque exculpatory alternative histories have become a kind of patois among the best and brightest.

With healthcare reform passed, the next big legislative battle will be over financial regulation reform. Unlike the Affordable Care Act, which the nation followed from opening to closing credits, financial reform has been running in a largely empty theater. Many reporters and citizens find themselves walking into the show two-thirds of the way through, bewildered by its complexity. But the movie's not over yet, and the ending is undetermined. So it's important for progressives to understand the essential elements of financial reform.

In the midst of the 2008 financial panic, Michael Lind, policy director of the Economic Growth Program of the New America Foundation, proposed that "a new postal savings system should be part of America's post-meltdown financial architecture." "When Congress created the postal savings system nearly a century ago, one of its goals was to encourage savings among the large number of low-income immigrants," ...

The New America Foundation's Steve Clemons, a knowledgeable Washington insider, questions whether there are even any real ideas underpinning the Cheney-Kristol merger. "There are different clusters of neoconservatives," Clemons says. "Some of them have told me that what, in fact, the Bill Kristol wing is about is keeping and maintaining power. It's not a question of principles or even of democracy at the end of a gun. That doesn't explain what's going on with this merger." ...

Original Article.

... "bipartisan" enterprises like the Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget--have labored mightily to confuse the issues. ...

I'll admit that like almost everyone in this town, I thought the public option was dead. In late October when Joe Lieberman announced he'd filibuster any bill that included it, I figured it was time to conduct an autopsy (cause of death: blows administered in quick succession by an obstinate insurance industry and "centrist" senators), commence the mourning process and move on.