"That work begins with this plan - a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years. It is not just another public works program. It's a plan that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment - the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work, even as, all around the country, there is so much work to be done. That's why we'll invest in priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century."

-President-elect Barack Obama, while addressing the country about his economic stimulus plan, "American Recovery and Reinvestment."

"The biggest problem facing the Obama plan, however, is likely to be the demand of many politicians for proof that the benefits of the proposed public spending justify its costs -- a burden of proof never imposed on proposals for tax cuts.

This is a problem with which Keynes was familiar: giving money away, he pointed out, tends to be met with fewer objections than plans for public investment "which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict 'business' principles." "

-Paul Krugman

"Meanwhile, how much has our nation's future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?"

-Paul Krugman

"Energy efficiency cannot be seen as Job 1 and the other stuff Job 2. You've got to do them all as Job 1 because they all have to work."

-Dr. Nathan Lewis, California Institute of Technology, in today's New York Times piece, "Hard Task for New Team on Energy and Climate. Dr. Lewis explains why any program on climate-friendly energy must move forward on three prongs simultaneously: increasing efficiency, moving existing nonpolluting energy technologies more rapidly into the market, and advancing on the frontiers of energy science in search of radical breakthroughs.

" We believe that aggressive support of energy science and technology, coupled with incentives that accelerate the current development and deployment of innovative solutions can transform the entire landscape of energy demand and supply.

What the world does in the coming decade will have enormous consequences that will last for centuries. It is imperative that we begin without further delay. "

-Steven Chu (USA) and Jose Goldemberg (Brazil), Co-Chair's Preface, "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future."

"The framework of the European system put governments in the position of behaving like 'a grandfather with a large family deciding what to give his favorite grandchildren for Christmas,' Mr. Trittin said in an interview."

-From this New York Times article about the pitfalls and failures of cap and trade in Europe.

"We've got to find a more moderate middle here because you're playing with fire."

-Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), making the case that Obama should postpone his cap-and-trade agenda.

"I think we already have a green revolution, because I separate my plastics and I eat Kashi cereal. So...What more are we supposed to do, Thomas Friedman??"

-Steven Colbert, from his interview with Thomas Friedman on last Thursday's Report

"Government accounting is different from that in the private sector. A firm that borrows to make a good investment will see its balance sheet improved, and its leaders will be applauded. But in the public sector there is no balance sheet, and as a result, too many of us focus too narrowly on the deficit. In reality, wise government investments yield returns far higher than the interest rate the government pays on its debt; in the long run, investments help reduce deficits. To cut them is penny-wise but pound-foolish, as New Orleans' levees and Minneapolis' bridge attest."

-Joseph E. Stiglitz, Mother Jones

"Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a government-financed initiative like that would have been called "industrial policy," which real capitalist democracies were supposed to avoid. When the Japanese perfected this approach -- with a mix of research help, tax incentives and government "guidance" -- American presidents would dispatch negotiators to demand a halt to the practice. The Japanese took them out to nice sushi dinners, gave them a police escort back to the airport, and ignored them."

-NYTimes

"Current energy trends are patently unsustainable --socially, environmentally, economically."

--From the International Energy Agency's most recent World Energy Outlook report (pdf), published yesterday, November 12th, 2008.

"My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent."

-Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman

"And when we all wake up on Nov. 5, 2008, to find that we have made Barack Obama the president of the United States, the world is already going to feel, to all of us, a little different, a little truer to its, and our, better nature. It is part of the world's nature and of our own to break, ruin and destroy; but it is also our nature and the world's to find ways to mend what has been broken. We can do that. Come on. Don't be afraid."

-Pullitzer Prize Winner Michael Chabon, in his Washington Post op-ed, "Obama vs. the Phobocracy," February 4, 2008.

"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

-Abraham Lincoln, Annual message to Congress, December 1st, 1862

"[W]hat the economy needs now is something to take the place of retrenching consumers. That means a major fiscal stimulus. And this time the stimulus should take the form of actual government spending rather than rebate checks that consumers probably wouldn't spend."
-Paul Krugman

"In times like these, the best a sensible leader can do is to take the short-term panic and channel it into a program that is good on its own merits even if it does nothing to stimulate the economy over the next year. That's why I'm hoping the next president takes the general resolve to spend gobs of money, and channels it into a National Mobility Project, a long-term investment in the country's infrastructure."
-David Brooks

"As long as the [financial] industry won their bets, they could pretend that they were acting on their own and had no need of the government. However, when they lost big, as they did with the collapse of the housing bubble, they had no choice but to go running to the government for help. Wall Street executives, who might complain about a government support check of a few thousand dollars for an unemployed single mother, suddenly were demanding hundreds of billions of dollars from the government to keep their banks from collapsing."

-Dean Baker

"He said that [the next president] should not be trying to solve problems one by one- first, get the economy on track, next deal with health care, next with energy, etc.- instead should put together an economic package that makes progress across the board."

-John Podesta as quoted by Mike Lux

From the Washington Post:

"Metro and 30 other transit agencies across the country may have to pay billions of dollars to large banks as years-old financing deals unravel, potentially hurting service for millions of bus and train riders, transit officials said yesterday.

The problems are an unexpected consequence of the credit crisis, triggered indirectly by the collapse of American International Group, the insurance giant that U.S. taxpayers recently rescued from bankruptcy, officials said.

AIG had guaranteed deals between transit agencies and banks under which the banks made upfront payments that the agencies agreed to repay over time. But AIG's financial problems have invalidated the company's guarantees, putting the deals in technical default and allowing the banks to ask for all their money at once."

Ryan Avent:

"One might ask just what the hell was the point of giving AIG government credit worth $122 billion (and counting) if it wasn't going to prevent the deals the firm guaranteed from falling apart. Go read the Post story; it will disgust you seventeen ways fron Sunday."

Yglesias:

"WTF is happening here? Can't we, in exchange for all the money we're giving AIG, force the company to keep guaranteeing deals that are vital to keeping our public services running? Something about the implementation of this bailout is very troubling."

Drum:

"Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the issue. AIG is still guaranteeing the deals. The problem is that the contracts with the banks terminate automatically if AIG doesn't maintain a high credit rating. Which, needless to say, they haven't. So now the banks are demanding payment.

Which just goes to show how all this stuff trickles down not just to Main Street, but to the subways underneath Main Street too. However, a Treasury Department spokesman says, 'Treasury is aware of this situation.' That should make us all feel better, right?"

"Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong."

-Jacob Weisberg, in his piece on Slate.com, "The End of Libertarianism"

"Finally, if Congress passes another stimulus package, it can't just be another round of $600 checks to go buy flat-screen TVs made in China. It has to also include bridges to somewhere -- targeted investments in scientific research, mass transit, domestic clean-tech manufacturing and energy efficiency that will make us a more productive and innovative society, one with more skills, more competitiveness, more productivity and better infrastructure to lead the next great industrial revolution: E.T. -- energy technology."

-Thomas Friedman

"Pardon me for asking, but if a company is too big to fail, maybe - just maybe - it's too big, period...

...We seem to have forgotten that the original purpose of antitrust law was also to prevent companies from becoming too powerful. Too powerful in that so many other companies depended on them, so many jobs turned on them, and so many consumers or investors or depositors needed them - that the economy as a whole would be endangered if they failed. Too powerful in that they could wield inordinate political influence - of a sort that might gain them extra favors from Washington."

-Robert Reich

"[D]omestic policy outcomes are unlikely to hinge crucially on the relatively subtle differences between mainstream Democratic Party politicians. Rather, the views of relatively conservative congressional Democrats are likely to be decisive."

Matthew Yglesias, on the power that centrist party members like the Technology 16 yield over the legislative process.

"It's politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold."

-Paul Krugman

"I'm already sick of talking about me.

Meanwhile, we still have the financial crisis of our lifetimes to deal with. And let me point something out: while the stock market has been going gangbusters, we haven't yet seen anything like a return to normality in credit markets."

-Recently named (and humble) Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, explaining that the recent stock market surge is not necessarily indicative of an upswing in the economy.

"It's also a unique opportunity to bring together the public sector, the private sector, industry, the national labs, the universities. By doing that, not only do you make breakthroughs, but you already have this community involved, so they can take it to the next step, to the market."

-Representative Bart Gordon (D-TN) in an interview with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, discussing the need for an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, with a mandate to invest in potentially game changing energy technologies.

"[T]he U.S. economy is never going to be really healthy until the country figures out how to provide work at decent pay for all, or nearly all, of the men and women who want to work."

-Bob Herbert, in his recent New York Times column

"Don't look."

-Megan McArdle, in a post entitled, "How to handle the crisis in your 401k"

"Like all transformative movements, the Reagan revolution lost its way because for many followers it became an unimpeachable ideology, not a pragmatic response to the excesses of the welfare state."

-Francis Fukuyama, in a recent Newsweek article about the end of Reganism

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow
private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by
inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow
up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their
children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

-Thomas Jefferson, 1802.

"It's a larger issue of the House and Senate just don't talk to each other enough, work out trust and understanding. That's what this really is. They're in their little world, we're in our little world. It's sitting down like adults, both sides, House and Senate, and working out solutions."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Max Baucus on the apparent failure of the Democratic Congress to pass an extension to the critical renewable energy tax credits before the end of the 110th Congress.

"The report says working toward a new global climate deal remains important. But interestingly, it also says the priority should be advancing technological solutions, creating incentives for populations across the globe to preserve their forests, and making the most vulnerable populations more resilient to heat waves and flooding."

-Andy Revkin, on a new report issued Monday by the European Environment Agency, the World Health Organization and the European Commission, about Europe's increasing rate of climate change and how these organizations suggest this warming should be mitigated.

"[L]et's commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure -- smart transmission grids or mass transit -- for a green revolution."

-Thomas Friedman is making sense.