Each month when I get the official unemployment figures from the US government, I quickly search in my inbox for a note from former cable network CEO and senior economic adviser in the John Edwards and Barack Obama campaigns Leo Hindery who sends me the "effective unemployment" figures that many economic commentators from Joseph Stiglitz to Mort Zuckerman to Bob Herbert are begninning to use...

For some time, I have been writing that the US has lost site of its al Qaeda-rationalized strategic objectives in Afghanistan and stumbled into a civil war. Recently resigned US official Matthew Hoh also frames the challenge in Afghanistan as that of a 35 year old civil war in which the forces are far bigger than anything the US can influence...

US Budget Watch has updated a number of charts comparing the latest versions of the health care reform bills. Included is the new Republican version of the House bill, the score of which Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released last night. The new Republican bill would reduce the deficit by $80 billion over ten years, and likely reduce it even more in the out years. It would only cover roughly 3 million more uninsured, however...

Now, that was what I was talking about.

Dick Lugar, one of the old bulls of the Senate, has introduced a bill, S.2727, to extend, on a reciprocal basis, the inspections under START for another six months. (More precisely, it extends the necessary privileges and immunities to Russian arms inspection teams.)...

Recently, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released estimates on the revenue effects of the “Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009,” a bill to extend and modify the homebuyer tax credit and to increase the carry-back period for losses to five years...

There are many impediments to making progress on the new infrastructure investments that America desperately needs: the difficulty of securing financing (whether through new energy taxes, private-public partnerships, or tax-credit bonds); national and regional political dysfunction; and the inability to prioritize projects. To that list, add NIMBY ("Not in My Backyard"), local opposition to a proposal for new development...

WASHINGTON, DC -- 10:00 am -- Vice President Joe Biden was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania and has lived for decades in Wilmington, Delaware -- both working middle class communities that have been under siege from both domestic and international economic forces.

This morning at the Center for American Progress, Biden is going to host a discussion on the factors undermining America's middle claass with a number of scholars and public intellectuals. I'm here now at the meeting which is co-sponsored with the Economic Policy Institute...

In today's Washington Post, Ceci Connelly has an article titled, "Health Bills are too Timid on Cutting Costs, Experts Say." In it she discusses how the health care reform bills in Congress are "shying away" from incorporating some of the most "aggressive techniques" for slowing the rise of health care costs, even in spite of the Administration's stated dedication to reining in costs. She mentions concerns that constraining costs could result in some "half-tepid" measures being discussed on Capitol Hill, citing, for example, the fact that the Senate plan to tax high-price insurance plans will save far less money than eliminating the tax exemption for employer-sponsored coverage would. She additionally mentions the following concerns...

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office put out An Overview of Federal Support for Housing. In the report, CBO outlined the nearly $300 billion in housing-related spending and tax breaks offered this year...

A lot of people who normally don't take much notice of railroads were startled over the weekend when Warren Buffett, "the sage of Omaha," announced that he spending $26 billion to buy that last 77 percent of Burlington Northern Santa Fe shares he doesn't already own. Buffett described his investment as a big bet on the U.S. economy generally, and on BNSF, the nation's second largest railroad, in particular...