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Unfortunately, America’s rail workers are all too familiar with the consequences of how the railroad industry has been operated over the past 30 years. Precision scheduled railroading (PSR) has made the difference. PSR is a business model focused on reducing overhead costs and generating returns for shareholders. Similar to many other business models driven by financialization, it’s effectively  a scheme by giant railroad operators to cut staff and backup resources, push the remaining equipment and personnel to the breaking point, and funnel as much of the cash as possible to Wall Street. And by increasing market concentration even further, the recently approved rail merger between Canadian Pacific (CP) and Kansas City Southern (KCS) promises to make the situation even more dire — for railroad workers, for the communities our rail lines pass through, and for the American economy.

The SVB collapse rubs in our collective faces the fact that the financiers with great influence over our political economy are, by and large, a pack of greedy idiots.

For the past two years, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers has begged, berated, and bullied federal policy-makers to suck as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible, out of the economy. He just never meant, you know, his wealth or his friends’ wealth.

It’s been over 764 days since Donald Trump left the White House, yet his legacy still – even years into Biden’s own term – continues to pervade our highest echelons of government.

Christine Wilson leaving the FTC is good news for anyone who cares about effective antitrust enforcement. A quintessential revolving door figure, Wilson’s tenure was only useful to her job prospects once she decided it was time to leave the FTC.

Eberly and her co-author, fellow economist Arvind Krishnamurthy, find that Geithner’s policies were excellent, and his biggest critics should shut up.

A 38-car train wreck. Toxic chemicals seeping into water and soil, and a black plume rising in the sky. Sick people, sick pets. As the Prospect’s Jarod Facundo wrote last week, the national spotlight remains fixed on the ecological consequences of the February 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

In the context of this ecological disaster, arguing for a reduced budget for federal investigators, air and water quality testing, and programs that hold polluting corporations accountable for proper cleanup and restitution is sheer madness. But that’s exactly what the current right-wing push for massive government spending cuts in the name of deficit reduction would entail.

If Zients and Brainard want to prove to their critics that they are ready to fight corporate power on behalf of the little guy, they have ample opportunities to start.

Attacks on aggressive antitrust enforcement from ‘fellow Democrats’ who work for monopolists should be seen for what they are.

Congressional Democrats managed to pass a few crucial measures during December’s lame duck session. One tiny fraction of the omnibus bill to fund the government was the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, a measure for which anti-monopoly advocates have long been pushing. And beyond the DOJ Antitrust and FTC’s edict to enforce competition, the FTC has another underfunded but crucial mission: consumer protection. 

In all, these look like the moves of a White House trying to endear itself to big business, now that the Democratic trifecta is gone.

But succeeding at his Cancer Moonshot’s goals will require more than funding research into cancer treatments. As the first day of February marks the beginning of National Cancer Prevention Month, it’s worth acknowledging that cancer prevention requires different approaches than treatment, and must include a reckoning with the carcinogens that pervade our environment. If Biden really wants to fight cancer in America, he’s going to have to challenge the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Among other things, this means confronting an Achilles heel of the Democratic Party: domestic fracking.

Zients owes his entire public-policy career to his corporate worldview and connections, which have remained strikingly consistent for over a decade—exactly in keeping with his pre-government history.

Pete Buttigieg’s personnel choices were certainly a factor.

The way that this person thinks about the multivarious philosophical, economic, and political problems of public health will now be the expressly endorsed opinion of the president and Congress of the United States, with all of the gravitas and import that brings.