| Good morning.
Haiti has been devastated by an earthquake measuring 7.0, leaving many thousands dead:
Rescue teams struggled in the early morning darkness Wednesday to make their way through the rubble of collapsed buildings after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon.
The quake, with a magnitude estimated at 7.0, caused the collapse of the National Palace, leveled countless shantytown dwellings and brought more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere's poorest and most disaster-prone.
The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles. As night fell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's densely populated capital, fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness.
McClatchy asks will Wednesday's Wall Street inquiry find the real villains?, as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission opens its investigation into what led to the financial meltdown in 2008.
Experts hope 'jobs bill' learns stimulus lessons, as do many of us - you mean all those tax cuts didn't do what targeted spending could have? Who knew?
The failure of Washington lawmakers to recognize the severity of the Great Recession has slowed the recovery and allowed unemployment to reach double-digit levels, according to some of the nation's leading economists. The experts hope that the latest effort - in the form of a new "jobs bill" being crafted by Democratic leaders - will not only be sizable enough totackle the problem, but also will focus only on programs providing the most "bang for the buck."
"In retrospect, they were overly optimistic," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group, said of the previous efforts to stimulate the economy. "They just didn't appreciate the severity of the downturn. ... Even now, they don't seem to get it."
Hopefully those in Congress will understand that the jobs bill isn't about creating jobs, but about investing in infrastructure of our nation, in projects that will allow future economies to grow. Even Sen. Snowe seems to get it (h/t DBailey):
As I reiterated to OMB Director Orszag today, the challenges of our economy are of paramount consequence and job creation and economic growth must remain the central goals of the legislative agenda for this next session of the 111th Congress. We have an obligation to ensure that each and every dollar we spend either creates jobs at a greater rate or protects displaced individuals at a lower cost than competing policies on the table.
And as an example, reader Bob K sends along this update on work at the Elizabethtown Amtrak Station, the 8th worst stimulus project in the nation.
An open thread. |
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