The NYT reports that Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, announced his plans to return to his position as University Professor at Harvard University at the end of the year. Dr. Summers is the chief White House advisor to the President on the […]

Tina Brown introduces: Gary Cohen, Executive Vice President, BD Geeta Rao Gupta, Senior Fellow, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Richard C. Holbrooke , Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. Department of State “and, of course” Ashley Judd, Board Member, Population Services International Starts with Geeta Rao Gupta, who declares the primary issue to be […]

Moderator is Katie Couric, News Anchor and Managing Editor at CBS News. Panelists are Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah , Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia Muhtar Kent, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company Mr. Kent’s favorite book is Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. […]

(Joined in progress) Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan Michigan – “No Worker Left Behind,” which provides retraining for those downsized auto workers and others. Escalation of high school curriculum so that graduating students must have taken college prep courses—has resulted in reduction in dropout rate because the community understands that this is a good thing […]

The second day of the conference, and the first full of the Initiative, is devoted primarily to E&E. Random notes: President Clinton noted in his opening statement that the Haitian disaster’s immediate effect was to eliminate (kill) 17% of the Haitian workforce. Melinda Gates notes that her efforts are mostly aligned with MDG #4, but […]

Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post Fearing a soaring deficit, many analysts favor letting Bush tax cuts expire makes a slip in thought or typing, but I wonder if a lot of people might also use this shorthand sort of thinking in the tax cuts raise revenue tradition: …many economists and budget analysts say there’s […]

Prof Barkley Rosser expresses irritation with suggestions of pay roll cuts as stimulus: In yesterday’s WaPo, accessible as one of Mark Thoma’s general links, http://www.economistsview.typepad.com , Nouriel Roubini sounded very reasonable for anyone addressing the utterly corrupt and degraded “catfish” deficit commission soldouts. He proposed a cut in payroll taxes, to be made revenue neutral […]

by Mike Kimel Corporate Tax Rates and Unemployment, A Correction Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog. — I’m embarrassed. I messed up last week’s post which appeared at Angry Bear and on the Presimetrics blog. Essentially, I copied in some of the data on tax rates incorrect for three years in the late 1970s; the […]

Robert Waldmann Something odd seems to be happening in US public opinion. Pollsters are shifting from polls of registered voters to polls of likely voters. Given demographics and the enthusiasm gap, I expected the Republican lead in the House generic ballot to increase. Until recently, that seemed to be happening right on schedule. Since then […]

With thanks to Felix Salmon for arranging the invitation. There’s an episode of House where he has to get rid of one of the people for his new team.  By the end of the episode, the sharpest person in the group has said everything that we would have expected to hear from House—and is therefore […]