Health Care News

In the fall of 2008, decades of finance-first, bankers-know-best economic policies coalesced to create one of the worst economic crises in history, one that the banks themselves could not survive without staggering levels of government support.

Yet astonishingly, nearly two years after the crash, Wall Street is still setting the economic agenda in Washington. As Congress begins to examine broader economic policy, lawmakers are under heavy Wall Street pressure to reduce the federal budget deficit -- even though that could mean deepening the jobs crisis without any substantive economic benefits.

Small-bore reforms

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

President Barack Obama invited leading economic thinkers to a job creation summit on Thursday to help combat the worst unemployment crisis in decades. The stakes couldn’t be higher: If Obama can’t build momentum for robust legislation that will create jobs, the unemployment rate could remain in double-digits all the way through 2011.