State of Working America: A Report by the Economic Policy Institute
A biennial report on the impact of the economy on Americans’ living standards

The Road to Good Jobs: An American Prospect Special Report
Articles by Harold Myerson, Robert Kuttner, and others

Motherload: An American Prospect Special Report
Why Can't America Have a Family-Friendly Workplace?

The Middle Class at Risk: A Century Foundation Report
Straightforward facts and data on the makeup, circumstances, and economic challenges of the American middle class

Tax Politics
An examination of where progressives stand on tax policy, and the politics of progressive taxation

Progressive Priorities
Providing policymakers and the public with a positive vision for progressive policymaking supported by a series of new and bold policy ideas in priority areas identified by American Progress

....In “The Squandering of America,” Robert Kuttner says financial elites have too much sway over the Democratic Party — and, as a result, over public policy. Judging from the tax-loophole episode, it’s hard to disagree.

... The strength of Kuttner’s latest effort is that, with seven years’ distance from the Clinton era, his arguments now look emphatically right. ... (Read the full review.)

A. Well, I think there are three things they ought to be doing. First of all, there’s the housing mess. We need something like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation of the 1930s, where a government agency, financed by government bonds, would buy these bonds back from Citigroup and Merrill and whoever at a steep discount, maybe thirty or forty cents on the dollar—they’ve already been written down to zero, because nobody wants to buy them—and turn them back into affordable mortgages, turn them into mortgages that would have a rate below market instead of the kind of predatory rate that subprime mortgages had. And you could then repopulate these houses. People on the brink of foreclosure would be able to keep their houses. Other people could become homeowners. So you need a much bolder approach to the housing crisis.

Q. Please explain the title of your book. What is being squandered here?

A. I call this the squandering of America because our country's promise is being squandered in several respects. Not only are we losing our leadership in the world, but America is an economy of broad prosperity is being wrecked, and most of the gains are going to a tiny elite. Not only is that bad for the rest of us - it risks the kind of financial collapse that we've seen in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

Q. This book takes aim at policies that have served, over the last few decades, to dismantle regulations on capitalism. But isn't the whole point of capitalism that it's best at keeping itself in check?

A. Well, that's the theory of one kind of capitalism -- laissez-faire. But that was pretty well discredited in the 20th century, with the great crash and the New Deal's success in saving capitalism from itself. The boom of the postwar years was a triumph of managed capitalism - not only was the system dynamic as well as stable, but the gains were broadly shared. ... (Read the full interview.)