Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
Baker is author of many books, including Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Polipoint Press, 2009); The United States Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006).
US debt deal: how Washington lost the plot
President Obama and the Republicans in Congress have finally worked out a deal over the debt ceiling. It appears as though the Republicans got most of what they wanted: big cuts to domestic spending and no tax increases. On the plus side, social security and Medicaid appear to be largely ...
Will the US Credit Rating Be Downgraded?
As we get the final details of the debt ceiling deal between President Obama and Congress, we still have to wait for the verdict of the credit rating agencies. Will they give us the thumbs up or will they tell Congress that it has to take even more money from ...
President Obama Doesn't Understand the Origins of the Deficit
That is what he told the country in his address on Monday night. President Obama described a situation in which the government had been perpetually running large deficits since President Clinton left office. The deficit increased even more as a result of the recession. For the last decade, we have ...
The Drive to Cut Social Security: Why Are the Gang of Six Scared of Information?
A central theme of the Gang of Six's deficit reduction crusade is lowering the annual cost of living for Social Security. They propose to change the formula so that the annual adjustment would be 0.3 percentage points lower than would otherwise be the case. This cut will add up through ...
Wall Street will not let Republicans pull the debt ceiling trigger
The tension is building in the budget talks as the calendar closes in on the August 2 drop-dead date. According to Treasury Secretary Geithner, this is the date where the government would no longer have the money to pay its bills and a default on the debt would be looming. ...
Budget Blowhards: Why the Budget Debate Is Destined to Become Ever More Painful
There are few exercises more entertaining than ridiculing the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of leaders in Washington. The great part is that this is completely bipartisan. Neither party has a monopoly on solemnly stated absurdities. And of course we never have to worry about running out of ...
The conventional wisdom among the current generation of school reformers is that bad teachers are to blame for the failure of many of our children to learn. Applying this logic to the current debates over the budget and the economy, we should be pointing a big finger of blame at ...
Economists: laissez-faire or plain lazy?
Two prominent medical researchers reviewed hundreds of thousands of records on infant and childhood mortality dating back over the last eight centuries. They discovered that over the vast majority of this 800-year period, only around half of newborns survived to adulthood; they concluded that we should not expect our children ...
Saving Social Security From Its Saviors
As a result of the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting economic downturn, Social Security is more important than ever. Already, two thirds of people age 65 rely on it for more than half their income. With traditional pensions disappearing and many near retirees losing much or all ...
How to make short work of unemployment
Washington always does a superb job of focusing intently on problems that are of little importance. The current, end-of-the-world debt/deficit negotiations is a great case in point. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership are heatedly negotiating a deal on the deficit that has almost nothing to do with the ...
Right to Rent: Will the Obama Administration Finally Fix Housing?
The concept of "right to rent" has been floating around Washington for almost four years. Under this proposal , foreclosed homeowners would be allowed to remain in their house as renters paying the market rent, for a substantial period of time (e.g. five years) following a foreclosure. While several bills ...
The Endgame on the Debt Ceiling
As we know, President Obama and his team do not appear to be very effective negotiators when it comes to dealing with the Republicans in Congress. Last December, the Republicans forced the president to renew the Bush tax cuts for the rich. More recently, they got him to make $38 ...
The faith-based economics of deficit reduction
Sometimes, it can be fun to get inside a crazy worldview to ask how it deals with contradictory evidence. For example, how do creationists reconcile their view that all plants and animals were created in their current form around 10,000 years ago, with fossil evidence of life forms dating back ...
Political Advice to Republicans on Medicare
The Republicans are very upset that their vote for Representative Ryan's plan to end Medicare is being used against them. The loss of an upstate New York congressional seat that they held for 50 years was quite a shock. Furthermore, groups are already using this vote in attack ads around ...
Bernie Sanders Tries Some Clear Thinking on Prescription Drugs
Drugs are cheap. There are few drugs that would sell for more than $5-$10 a prescription in a free market. However, many drugs in the United States sell for hundreds of dollars per prescription and sometimes several thousand dollars per prescription. There is a simple reason for this fact: government-granted ...
The Beatification of Senator Simpson
Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson has been a holy terror ever since he was appointed by President Obama to co-chair his deficit commission last year. With equal fervor he has attacked both his opponents and the basic facts surrounding the budget in general and Social Security in particular. Ordinarily, either ...
Wall Street Banker Peter Peterson and the Deficit Ostriches
Last spring, Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson hosted a lavish, daylong conference devoted to the budget deficit. One of the highlights was an appearance by President Clinton. Clinton boasted of how he had wanted to cut Social Security back in the mid-90s but Congressional leaders from both parties wouldn't ...
The Good News and the Bad News in the Social Security Trustees' Report
There was both good news and bad news in the Social Security trustees' report released last week. The bad news is that the program is projected to cost somewhat more in the latest report than in the 2010 report. As a result, its projected 75-year shortfall was increased by 0.3 ...
The Big Retailers Versus the Big Banks: It Makes a Big Difference
The battle of the "swipe fees" has been hard to miss the last few weeks. The big banks are spending millions of dollars on TV, radio and Internet ads telling us that the government should not limit the fees that they charge on debit cards transactions. On the other side, ...
Why Does Senator McCaskill Want to Bankrupt Our Children?
That is what people should be asking Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill along with her fellow senators who are advocated strict caps on government spending. The idea being pushed by Senator McCaskill, together with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker and several other prominent senators, would limit federal spending to 20.6 percent of ...
The Battle Is Over Money, Not Philosophy
Ever since House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out his proposal for voucherizing Medicare we have seen a steady drumbeat of stories telling us that this is a battle over the size and role of government. This is not true. It is a battle over money. This point is ...
Tyranny of the Central Bankers
The European Central Bank (ECB) announced earlier this month that it was raising its overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 1.25 percent. This is very bad news for people across the eurozone countries and possibly the rest of the world as well. This action shows ...
Representative Ryan Puts the Republicans on the Record
For years people have accused the Republican Party of being the servants of the rich and powerful at the expense of the broader public. In the past, they would deny this charge and claim that they just had a different view of how the economy works. Republican House Budget Committee ...
Some Market Discipline for Economists
Last month, the International Monetary Fund's independent evaluation office issued a remarkable report. The report quite clearly blamed the IMF for failing to recognise the factors leading up to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and to provide warning to its members so that preventive actions could be ...
Government By People Who Hate You
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half ...
Click here to suggest an article
February 5th, 2013
Tax Games and Redistributing Income Upward
The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is ...
January 30th, 2013
Timothy Geithner Saved Wall Street, Not the Economy
The accolades for Timothy Geithner came on so thick and heavy in the last week that it's necessary for those of us in the reality-based ...
December 19th, 2012
Michigan Republicans Deny Police Officers and Firefighters the Right to Work
That is what the headlines would say if anyone really believed that the anti-union laws passed last week in Michigan actually had anything to do ...
December 3rd, 2012
The Serious People Are on the War Path
Fans of arithmetic everywhere know that the large deficits of the last five years are the result of the economic downturn caused by the collapse ...
October 15th, 2012
The wrecking society: Economics today
There is an old story from the heyday of the Soviet Union. As part of their May Day celebrations they were parading their latest weapon ...
September 2nd, 2012
Poverty: The New Growth Industry in America
Recent trends in poverty rates should have the country furious at its leaders. When we get the data for 2011 next month, we are likely ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
February 18th, 2011
Unions badgering Wisconsin's finances?
You have to give Gov. Walker and his wealthy patrons credit. Here we have a situation where Wall Street fat cats wrecked the economy - ...
July 21st, 2011
The Drive to Cut Social Security: Why Are the Gang of Six Scared of Information?
A central theme of the Gang of Six's deficit reduction crusade is lowering the annual cost of living for Social Security. They propose to change ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
October 18th, 2010
Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens
As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics. On the one hand, there are those who think it is the ...
July 28th, 2011
President Obama Doesn't Understand the Origins of the Deficit
That is what he told the country in his address on Monday night. President Obama described a situation in which the government had been perpetually ...
August 31st, 2011
Do Liberals Have to Be Losers?
National political discussion of the economics and budgets over the last two decades have been dominated by the debate over President Clinton's tax increase and ...
August 29th, 2011
President Obama's job creation mirage
President Obama has discovered how serious the recession is. That's what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on MSNBC with Michael Eric Dyson, 3/22/13
Michael Moore on Democracy Now!, 6/28/12
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 5/11/12
Michael Moore on MSNBC, Super Tuesday, 3/6/12
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
