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...activity spread across the economy." It's certainly better for economic activity to be increasing rather than decreasing, but the focus on whether the economy is in recession or not can miss a lot. "I don't care about what the dating committee says. I'm concerned about longer-term issues," says Yale economist Robert Shiller. "We are in for an extended period of subnormal economic growth." Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of bond-investing giant Pimco, has popularized a catchier if less informative phrase for what we're in for: "the new normal...
...long boom in stock prices from 1982 to 2000 and the shorter one in housing prices from about 1997 to 2006 were fueled by rising debt. Ever easier mortgage terms and falling interest rates provided a brisk tailwind for home prices. In the stock market, higher profits pushed along by bigger consumer and corporate debt loads brought higher stock prices. Start ratcheting the indebtedness down and throw in slower growth, and both of these processes go backward. For the long-term health of the economy, that's good--as we've learned, debt-fueled growth is not indefinitely sustainable...
...Washington Benefits for Gay Partners Extending an olive branch to critics who say he has failed to follow through on campaign promises, President Obama signed a memo on June 17 granting long-term-care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees. The White House most recently drew criticism from gay-rights advocates for supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, which opposes same-sex marriage...
That won't be easy to change. The 1990s managed-care boom was supposed to incentivize HMOs to keep us healthy, but it slashed needed as well as unneeded care in a frenzy of willy-nilly cost-cutting and short-term profit-taking, triggering a national backlash. And if Congress gets into the details of what would be reimbursed under a new fee-for-quality structure, the same interest-group politics that have distorted and ultimately paralyzed the current system could dominate the new system; that's why Obama has proposed to depoliticize those decisions through an independent agency similar...
That means Obama is still looking for someone he can pray with and turn to for spiritual guidance. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton stayed in close touch with their hometown pastors after moving to the White House. Not long into his first term, Clinton also started scheduling regular meetings with Bill Hybels, pastor of a Chicago-area evangelical megachurch called Willow Creek. Three other religious leaders - Phil Wogaman, Tony Campolo and Gordon MacDonald - went to the White House for monthly prayer sessions with Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal, as impeachment began to weigh...