Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for TheAtlantic.com. More

Thompson has written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has also appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

Extreme Makeover: Federal Reserve Edition

Business
Talk about your public beautification projects. The Fed's getting a makeover and image-softening advice from an Enron lobbyist. Huh.

The Fed has probably done more than any other institution to avoid a financial disaster on par with the Great Depression. Although the stimulus spending is slow, TARP is sort of a political mess, Geithner's public-private plan is kaput, (and let's not even bring up Detroit), somehow, we're nearing a softer-than-expected landing to the recession. So why does the Fed need a facelift? And why hand the scalpel to an Enron lobbyist?

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Today's Unemployment Numbers Made Simple

Business
Just the facts: The US economy lost 345,000 jobs in May. That's bad. But economists thought we'd lose almost 200,000 more. That's good. At 9.5%, unemployment is higher than its been in a quarter century. That's bad. But we're losing jobs slower than any time since September. That's good. Economists predict we could hit double digit unemployment later this year. Bad. "Before the end of the year and maybe even by late summer we could be at flat employment," says economist Alan D. Levenson. Good.

Got it? Maybe this would be easier with pictures:

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How to Make the United States Innovative Again

Business
Yesterday I suggested that maybe the United States isn't as innovative as we like to think. (It wasn't my idea. It was Michael Mandel's.) But Mandel's piece didn't seem to answer the big question: What are innovators doing wrong? And how do you design a macroeconomic policy to unleash ideas? Today, I have answers, and they range from rescuing engineers from the clutches of the military, to hosting a big national innovation contest, to changing the way we tax companies.

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Sarah Palin's Economics Lesson

Business

Sarah Palin gave a speech about economics on Wednesday, but it only popped into my RSS reader last night:

"Some in Washington would approach our economic woes in ways that absolutely defy Economics 101, and they fly in the face of principles, providing opportunity for industrious Americans to succeed or to fail on their own accord," she said. "Those principles it makes you wonder what the heck some in Washington are trying to accomplish here."
Wow. Whatever else might be said about Sarah Palin, I hope we can all agree that there's absolutely no reason to take her seriously as a fiscal conservative.

Juicy Learnings from the Harvard Crimson's Graduation Report

Business
The Harvard Crimson published its annual graduation survey with job stats for the Class of 2009, which is a cool barometer for the migration of America's well-to-do whippersnappers. What do their jobs tell us about the state of the economy? Let's grade the industries. Finance flunks. Media gets a D. Health and education receive gold stars. And grad school graduates cum laude.

The survey also includes more, um, intimate details.

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GOP Proposes Spending Cuts. Are They Serious?

Business
At nearly $2 trillion, the deficit is a monster. So the GOP has proposed $375 billion of budget cuts to pare it down. That's the good news. The bad news is that when you peak under the hood of the engine, you see two big wrenches. 1) $317 billion of the estimated cuts is just a cap on discretionary spending, which is a make-believe item that will never pass Congress. 2) The new, actionable ideas amount to only $5 billion a year, which is a hardy 0.3% of the estimated deficit.

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Maybe the US Isn't So Innovative, After All

Business
BusinessWeek economist Michael Mandel has a bummer of a piece arguing that as much as the United States likes to think of itself as the world's eureka machine, maybe we're not as clever as we thought. "Innovation has stumbled" in the past decade, he says, and our innovation shortfall explains our trade deficit. It also explains why consumers took on so much debt. Heck, our national lack of imagination has all sorts of far reaching effects:

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How to Keep the US From Turning Into the Soviet Union

Business
Gorbachev helped destroy the Soviet Union by borrowing abroad and printing money to paper over the need for fundamental reform. How familiar does that sound? Simon Johnson has an interesting piece today about how to make it sound less familiar. His three-point plan is: Raise interest rates, begin to wean ourselves off Saudi oil, and bring the deficit down to about 5% GDP by next year. Hold it, five percent by 2010? You've got to be joking.

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Hulu Might Start Charging for Content

Business
Hulu is seriously considering charging users to watch its movies and television, according to Jeff Bercovici from Daily Finance. But Hulu, are we really going to enjoy your evil plot to destroy the world of television if we have to pay for it?

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Does Microsoft's Bing Ad Blame Google for the Financial Crisis?

Business
The new ad for Microsoft's new search engine decision engine Bing is out, and it is frenetic. "While everyone was searching, there was bailing," intones a bemused young voice over images of foreclosure signs and Wall Street freak outs. He continues: "While everyone was lost in the links, there was collapsing."  Photos of financial distress and destruction blink in and out like a Michael Bay action sequence, or a Ken Burns feature on fast-forward.

Why is Microsoft comparing online searches with the recession? And is it the weirdest indictment of Google you've ever heard?

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Even Tim Geithner Can't Sell His House

Business
Selling your bank bailout plan to Wall Street is one thing. Selling your house in this market is quite another. And via CNN Money we find something that will make Republicans chortle and regular Americans nod with jaded familiarity. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been reduced to renting his tony suburban New York home, because nobody in the world will buy it from him.

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In Recession, Television Beats Clothes, Food and Cars

Business
In a recession, people make cuts. But what would you give up first, your pants or your light bulbs? Your car or your cellphone? Those are important questions and an Ipsos/Reuters poll has the answer. We will eat dogfood before canceling HBO, Gawker concludes.

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Austan Goolsbee is Brilliant, But is He Right?

Business
In response to Jack Welch calling the Obama budget "from the moon," Austan Goolsbee, Obama's silver-tongued economic spokesman, shot back:

"Look, we enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee."
Zing! But Goolsbee isn't really answering the question:

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What Socialism Looks Like

Business
Have you heard that the United States is headed toward socialism? Jonah Goldberg says it is. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby says it is. Phyllis Schlafly says it is. Richard Viguerie says it is. The Republican National Committee says it is. We must be getting pretty close.

How close? This is what socialism looks like:

Mitt Romney Won't Run GM

Business
Atlantic editor James Bennet wrote a really smart and provocative piece about why President Obama should tap Mitt Romney to run General Motors. His reasons are all good, chief among them: 1) GM needs a leader that wasn't present at the uncreation, 2) Romney needs a way to distinguish himself from Republican rivals, and 3) Obama needs some political cover to properly shrink the company, and seems to love coopting enemies.

I'm not going to disagree with my editor, because 60 percent of me thinks he's right, and the rest of me really likes my job. Instead I'll name the reasons why Mitt Romney will never run General Motors.

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Why Mitt Romney Won't Run GM

Business
Atlantic editor James Bennet wrote a really smart and provocative piece about why President Obama should tap Mitt Romney to run General Motors. His reasons are all good, chief among them: 1) GM needs a leader that wasn't present at the uncreation, 2) Romney needs a way to distinguish himself from Republican rivals, and 3) Obama needs some political cover to properly shrink the company, and seems to love coopting enemies.

I'm not going to disagree with my editor, because 60 percent of me thinks he's right, and the rest of me really likes my job. Instead I'll name the reasons why Mitt Romney will never run General Motors.

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How Health Care Stole Your Pay Raise

Business
This amazing graph bouncing around the web is the most striking example of why health care reform isn't just about reforming care. It's about reforming the economy. New bumper sticker: "Reform Health Care; Get a Raise!"

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Which State Was Least Great in 2008?

Business
A really cool data table -- with an even cooler graph after the jump -- shows how GDP, jobs and home prices moved in each state last year. How did your state do? If you live in North Dakota, congratulations to both of you for nationwide highs in both home price increase (1.9%) and a GDP boost of 7.3% (...whoa, look out China!). As for the shame of the nation, hang your head Alaska (worst GDP), Arizona (worst job losses by percent), and Nevada (worst home price collapse). But which state did the worst overall? You can probably guess...

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Business

Do Poor Fat Americans Deserve More Taxes?

Business
Is the recession making us fatter? In the last year, America's obesity rate is up almost 2 percent, according to a Newsweek/Gallup poll. That means 5.5 million more Americans have graduated into obesity in the last 12 months. And really it's so surprise: junk food is so terribly cheap and often delicious.

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