New America Policy Papers: 2011

Papers and other formal publications from our policy programs are available below. To jump to another year in the archives, please use the links at right.

Understanding the S&P Downgrade

August 10, 2011

Introduction

On Friday, August 5, the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) credit rating agency downgraded the long-term credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+, issuing the country’s first downgrade from a major rating agency. The downgrade was issued in part because of the country’s high level of debt and the failure of recent legislation to control it. More significantly, though, the downgrade resulted from increasing questions over the nation’s political capacity to enact further deficit reduction in light of the recent debate.

Programs:

Monetary Policy and Central Banking After the Crisis

  • By
  • Thomas Palley,
  • New America Foundation
August 3, 2011

The financial crisis and Great Recession have prompted a rethink of monetary policy and central banking.

Programs:

Debt Deal Summary

August 1, 2011

Major Components

  • Three tranche debt ceiling increase
  • Ten year discretionary spending caps
  • Guaranteed vote on Balanced Budget Amendment
  • Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to recommend $1.5 trillion in savings

Debt Ceiling Increase

Programs:

Yes We Can Create Decent Jobs

  • By Heather Boushey, Senior Economist, Center for American Progress
July 28, 2011

The American economy can produce decent jobs. We know this to be true because it has happened before. Getting back to a decent-jobs economy will require a commitment on the part of policymakers to creating many more middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. While there are important reasons to support the incomes of those at the bottom of the wage distribution, we will not improve the lives of working families without improving and increasing job opportunities in the middle.

Programs:

Adding Teeth to the Debt Ceiling Increase

July 27, 2011

As debt ceiling negotiations enter the final stages, lawmakers must focus on the overarching goals of stabilizing and then reducing our debt and enacting strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure debt targets are hit.

Programs:

A Vision for Economic Renewal

  • By Task Force on Job Creation
July 26, 2011

The economic environment in America today is more dire than most of us have ever known. We are in the midst of an unemployment emergency, in essence a jobless recovery: notwithstanding recent marginal upticks in official U.S. jobs numbers, there will be no fundamental improvement in the unemployment picture unless major new national economic strategy initiatives are taken. Who will step up to drive them forward?

Programs:

Taking Asset Building and Earnings Incentives to Scale in HUD-Assisted Rental Housing

  • By
  • Reid Cramer,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Jeffrey Lubell, Center for Housing Policy
July 21, 2011

In the United States, housing assistance is not an entitlement. Despite annual federal expenditures in excess of $30 billion for housing subsidies distributed to roughly 4.8 million households, millions of eligible families with low incomes and high housing costs do not receive any support. Some families have applied for assistance from their local housing authorities but must wait for their names to come to the top of the list; others have not applied but may pay large shares of their income for rent, reducing available funds for basic necessities, such as food and health care.

Programs:

Wired and Wireless Broadband: What’s at Stake for Rural Communities?

  • By
  • Amalia Deloney,
  • New America Foundation
July 19, 2011

From June 28-30, more than 300 rural leaders from across the United States met in St. Paul, MN, for the 2011 National Rural Assembly. The event included work sessions, roundtables, networking opportunities, and panel presentations for stakeholders who represented the diversity of rural America in geography, race/ethnicity, and public policy interests. Participants strategized about how to create a nation where rural communities can thrive and contribute to the nation’s success.

Programs:

The Jobs Question

  • By James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin
July 19, 2011

This is by far the most jobless of recent recoveries. Allen Sinai, a man known for describing numbers carefully, already wrote in November 2009:

“Never has business shed so many workers so fast, so many people failed to find work who are looking for work, and so many dropped out of the labor force as in the current circumstance.”

By that time, the stock market was already recovering but payrolls were not. Sinai wrote:

Programs:

A Global Minimum Wage System

  • By
  • Thomas Palley,
  • New America Foundation
July 19, 2011

The global economy is suffering from severe shortage of demand. In developed economies that shortfall is explicit in high unemployment rates and large output gaps. In emerging market economies it is implicit in their reliance on export-led growth. In part this shortfall reflects the lingering disruptive effects of the financial crisis and Great Recession, but it also reflects globalization’s undermining of the income generation process. One mechanism that can help rebuild this process is a global minimum wage system. That does not mean imposing U.S.

Programs:
Syndicate content