Finding a New Budget and a New Shape of Government

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

In his excellent Washington Post op-ed piece, my friend Matt Miller begins to touch on the real budget battle of the next decade: what will the shape and capacity of government be? Matt points out that the co-chair of the National Budget Commission, Erskine Bowles, has suggested that a long-run goal for government spending might be 21% of GDP. Matt then observes that Ronald Reagan’s spending averaged 22% of GDP and argues that, in an era when 76 million baby boomers are retiring, 21% is too low and represents a substantial, improbable, and undesirable restructuring…

Budgets, the Economy, the Future, and Slightly More on Jack Lew

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

I think we need an actual, real dialogue about America’s economic future. This blog is intended to help. I found upon reading Marshall Auerback’s highly critical blog about Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee for the next Director of OMB, that we actually had some — admittedly hard to see — common ground on which I want to build.

But that common ground does not include the critique of Jack Lew. So let me be clear: I think that the criticism was unfair and, in its spirit, inaccurate, and the tone of the criticism is representative of an…

Jack Lew for OMB

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

President Obama’s choice of Jack Lew to be his new Director of OMB is a slight surprise and exactly right. I’m sure the crazy right in Congress will find a reason to oppose him — probably because he understands government — but the rest of us should be delighted.

Jack has already been an exceptional OMB director. He served with distinction as a senior congressional staff member. He has foreign policy experience; was provost of New York University; and was a senior executive at CitiCorp. More importantly right now, he knows how to work in a White…

Riffing on Douthat’s Class War column: Whose agenda will it be?

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

I know it’s illegitimate to refer to a professed conservative favorably in these surroundings, but nevertheless I want to underline Ross Douthat’s column in Monday’s New York Times: “The Class War We Need.” Douthat uses mortgage deduction to make the point that too much of our tax structure and our entitlement structure goes to the affluent or relatively affluent. Which is not a horrible thing, except that it is paid for by the middle class — which both major political parties profess to see as the backbone of America. The same point applies to employee…

General McChrystal’s “Lesson”

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

I draw the following conclusions from this sorry episode. In relieving General McChrystal of his command, President Obama was right, given the mess the Rolling Stone’s article presented him. I can’t even imagine how the President would have been eviscerated if he had kept the general in his post. General McChrystal did exercise poor judgment, and a considerable sense of entitlement, as well as a poorly developed sense of personal survival in the snake pit the media has become. And Rolling Stone Magazine screwed General McChrystal. Given extraordinarily generous access, the magazine stretched a vague set…

Robert Bennett’s Defeat, the Demise of Bipartisanship, and the Crisis of 2018

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

Republican Senator Bennett was defeated in his attempt to be renominated for a fourth term as senator from Utah last week by an outraged Tea Party convention — although outraged about what remains unclear. I knew Senator Bennett distantly, disagreed with almost all of his policy beliefs, strongly supported his bipartisan effort with Senator Wyden to reform health care, and respected him.

The only major new idea in the health care legislation passed this year is the health care exchange. It is also the only idea with a chance of changing the unsustainable spending course we are…

The Insidious Effects of Sky-High CEO Pay

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

I was talking over drinks with a distinguished retired CEO of an iconic American manufacturing company - and he said these executive compensation numbers are crazy. So I decided to talk about why. To be clear, I do not think this is a pure economic and market issue; I think it is a system failure that involves power and bureaucratic politics.

First, when we talk about CEO pay, we are talking about two phenomena. Average CEO pay has grown way faster than the compensation of the rest of the employees. Twenty-five years ago, CEO compensation was…

Pope Benedict’s failure in mission-driven organization management

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

To start with, it is hard to imagine any other organization on earth in which the leader/CEO would still be around after such a long sequence of disastrous, morally and ethically wrong decisions. It certainly helps to be the lineal descendant of one of the 12 disciples and to be officially infallible, but there is also a more prosaic management and organizational matter involved.

I want to be absolutely clear: I am not blaming the fact of the Vatican’s pedophile crisis on the Pope. But the Vatican leadership, including the Pope, has clearly failed to understand, respond…

A Story about Tigers: Goldman Sachs/The SEC - Another sign of the end of civilization as we know it? Or just life in the big leagues?

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

This is a criticism of Goldman — or an explanation of Goldman-like behavior — from a Goldman admirer. I admire the company, its people, and the quality of its work. I think it is a great company and unique for its industry in its ambitions to be a good company. It is probably one of the two best financial businesses in the world. I also think that Goldman’s behavior and point of view suggests something larger about the finance sector and its place in our economy.

First, the facts around the Goldman/SEC matter don’t seem to…

The Antichrist, political insanity, and another end of civilization as we know it

Shaping the future with today’s choices.

This isn’t economics, but then David Brooks in his March 25 column predicts the end of economics as a discipline, saying that “economics would again become a subsection of history and moral philosophy.” (And not a minute too soon). In any case, I’ve been brooding about the Antichrist, after reading a recent Harris poll. 24% of Republicans — according to this poll — believe that “President Obama may be the Antichrist.” A key word here is “the.” If you take this for what it seems to imply and you go through the numbers, this means that…