HKS in the News July 2, 2012

1. Want to stimulate the economy? Let’s hand cash directly to the states (Bilmes, Chodos) The Washington Post

2. Class Now Trumps Race as the Great Divide in America (Putnam) The Atlantic

3. Obama Looks for Lift From Court Rulings, Euro Debt Deal (Jarding) Bloomberg Business Week

4. Falling Star: The Chinese economy is slowing and is likely to slow a lot more. Get ready for a hard landing (Overholt) Barron’s

5. Old Harvard Kennedy School friends still keep in touch The Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, SD)

Want to stimulate the economy? Let’s hand cash directly to the states

The Washington Post

June 29

Commentary by: Linda Bilmes, Shelby Chodos

Topic: The U.S. economy

Twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan angered many Democrats with a broad effort to eliminate red tape and allow states discretion over federal grants. He called it the New Federalism. A half-century earlier, President Franklin Roosevelt angered many Republicans by using federal dollars to put millions back to work through a variety of programs that became known as the New Deal.

Although we think of these two presidents and their initiatives as ideological opposites, there is no law of nature (or of economics) that prevents us from combining their ideas to help address the faltering economy today. A Reagan-Roosevelt approach — a sort of decentralized recovery that sends money directly to the states — has the best chance of putting people back to work and making America stronger. …

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Class Now Trumps Race as the Great Divide in America

The Atlantic

June 30

Quoted: Robert Putnam

Topic: Poverty in America

Robert D. Putnam , author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, issued a strong warning to anti-poverty advocates at a forum on social connectedness at the Aspen Ideas Festival Saturday, urging the audience to get beyond talking about poverty and race and start thinking about social mobility and class instead.

"Those two conceptual moves, framing it as poverty and thinking about it as a matter of race, have a very deep history... and I think both politically and analytically that's an almost fatally flawed framework," said Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, in response to remarks from co-panelists Anne Mosle, vice president of policy at the Aspen Institute, and Mario Small, chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. …

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Obama Looks for Lift From Court Rulings, Euro Debt Deal

Bloomberg Business Week

July 2

Quoted: Steven Jarding, Shorenstein Center

Topic: The U.S. presidential election

President Barack Obama travels this week to two states vital to his re-election, strengthened by a pair of victories in the Supreme Court and progress in Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. …

Even so, the victories Obama won in the Supreme Court burnish his standing in a way that may transfer to voters’ perception of his ability to handle the economy, said Steve Jarding, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. That link is one reason the Romney campaign has repeatedly sought to portray Obama as in over his head, he said.

“The court decisions say, ‘maybe he’s more competent than I thought,’” said Jarding, a former Democratic consultant. “That also gives him credibility on the economy.” …

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Falling Star: The Chinese economy is slowing and is likely to slow a lot more. Get ready for a hard landing

Barron’s

June 30

Quoted: William Overholt, Ash Center

Topic: China’s economy

After three decades of annual growth averaging 10%, China's bullet-train economy is slowing markedly. …

It's also of note that even some of the longtime bulls are growing concerned on the nation's future. One is William Overholt, a respected Asian scholar who has moved smoothly between Asian investment-banking posts, think tanks, including the Rand Corp., and academia; he's now a senior research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School.

As Overholt sees it, the economic and political reform movement of the Jiang Zemin/Zhu Rongji era (1993-2002) has flagged badly over the past 10 years. …

… China faces the prospect of long-term stagnation—a prospect potentially far worse than that of Japan some 20 years ago. Japan entered the economic dead zone at a time of broad and robust affluence, with per-capita annual income some eight times that of China's $5,000 and far more technological sophistication. "The bulk of Chinese high-tech products and indeed exports that come from foreign companies with plants domiciled in China, and they don't have to stay there," says Overholt. …

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Old Harvard Kennedy School friends still keep in touch

The Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, SD)

July 1

Quoted: Several HKS alumni

Topic: Eight female alumni reflect on their HKS experience 25 years ago

Eight women more than 25 years ago received letters announcing they had been accepted into a one-year program through the Harvard Kennedy School.

That included Shirley Halleen, then a state legislator from Sioux Falls.

She applied on a lark, she says now.

That lark led to a quarter-century-long friendship with seven other women participating in the program to prepare leaders and solve public problems.

The eight have met frequently over the years, although it has been 10 years since all could reunite. They chose to do it this year in South Dakota, the first time most had ever visited the state. …

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Broadcast Notes

Tarek Masoud, Ash Center

CNN , 7/2

Topic: Egypt’s new president