By now, many of you have probably read Frank Rich’s inaugural piece for New York Magazine. Freed from the bean counters and word counters of the New York Times, Rich pours forth pages (and pages) on what he calls “Obama’s Original Sin.”

I am not going to say that Rich is not being tough, per se, just that he isn’t as tough as he thinks.

So where was all this “fiscally responsible” fighting spirit when it came to paying out $32.6 billion in taxpayer funded banker bonuses?

Well, as Larry Summers said, “we are a country of law.”

The President is not a pragmatist. Pragmatists think being right is a test of intelligence. No pragmatist let Larry Summers near anything that required getting it right.

At the beginning of Obama’s term, when he talked about governing as a pragmatist, I perhaps foolishly believed he meant not pragmatism as DC understands it–as a principle-less squishy middle–but as the Pragmatist school of philosophers would mean it–as someone fundamentally open to and respectful of the ideas and viewpoints of all. Mind you, it [...]

Just what the country needs — another veteran of the Vampire Squid.

You see the usual gathering of so called Democratic strategists and former advisers support extending the Bush tax cuts. Translation: the losers brigade has arrived to save the day.

So, the President’s chief economic adviser now tells us, for the first time, that if we don’t get even the limited and uncertain stimulative effect of this dubious tax cut package, the US economy runs a heightened risk of a double dip recession.

Not sure why the White House would want to bring in someone, right before Darrell Issa gets the gavel of the House Oversight Committee, involved in a long-ago scandal.

But hey, he might “bring back” the business community! Goody.

In Steven Rattner’s book, he describes newly elected Barack Obama asking his advisors “Why can’t [the US automakers] make a Corolla?” Implicitly, of course, he was asking “why can’t they make a Corolla in the United States.” His economic advisors, according to Rattner, admitted they didn’t know: “We wish we knew.” The correct answer to [...]

I come to Steven Rattner’s Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry from a very particular perspective. As a Michigander whose husband still works in the auto industry and whose town has benefited from battery subsidies, I’m a grateful direct beneficiary of the work the Obama Administration did to save the auto industry. But that also means I read this book, which might have been subtitled, “Wall Street gapes at Detroit” from the perspective, “Detroit gapes back at Wall Street.”