Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


OWNING THE DEBATE….Ezra Klein on the Paulson rescue package:

One point Paul Krugman makes here is that the terms of the bailout were sharply constrained by the political strategy chosen by the Democrats. When Pelosi and Reid decided that this bill would not go through without Republican votes because Democrats would not be demagogued for cleaning up the mess caused by deregulation, they took more sharply liberal options like nationalization off the table.

That’s true, but I think I’d make a different political point. Henry Paulson unveiled his plan on Friday the 19th, and that was when the frame of the debate was set. And that frame was: purchase of troubled assets. At that point, virtually no one had so much as mentioned large scale nationalizations as a potential solution to the banking crisis. It just wasn’t on the public radar screen.

Now, maybe that wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe our current political coalition wouldn’t have been willing to consider it regardless. But virtually everyone agreed that action needed to be taken quickly to prop up the financial markets, and under circumstances like that there’s simply no chance of popping up at the last minute with a huge new proposal and thinking it has any chance of passing. If large-scale nationalization was really the preferred solution among liberal activists, the time to start pushing it was before Paulson and Bernanke introduced their bill. Doing it in the middle of last week, and then complaining that it didn’t get seriously considered, displays a failure of vision on the left, not from its congressional leadership.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate