The Whole Delivery

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy "I think we come back to the entitlement question. The Democrats should actually be in favor of certain kinds of progressive entitlement reform, it's not actually that big of a give..... One of the big concerns is doing too much fiscal austerity too soon in 2013. The more that you did in the form of, say, social security, one of the things with Social Security, which can be phrased in gradually over time, the lighter the load imposed in 2013." - Peter Orszag Personally, I like Erza Klein, especially after meeting him once in person. He's genuinely a nice guy overall for sure, and we know how intelligent he is from exploding onto the scene with consistent diligence on budgets at The American Prospect. Most people would probably say the same about Peter Orszag genuinely as a person. Nice guy who is definitely quite a personality for a lot of wonk people who aren't able to be pers...

(Photo from AP's Burke) It already is bad enough when your college announces as your commencement speaker a person who really doesn't meet your expectations. But it's even more unbearable when your school selects a person whose history is so egregious that he or she shouldn't be allowed to even speak at a kindergartner's graduation. That is the situation that Columbia's grad students of the School of International and Public Affairs were placed in when their school decided to select "wonderful" Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit as their commencement speaker in next month's graduation. And with their recognition of Pandit being one of the major players in Wall Street's omprehensive arrogance and robbing of money and dreams in the last several years, the students were certainly none too please . "He represents an industry that, even when it was stable and not in crisis, paid itself outrageous salaries," fumed Daniel Safran-Hon, 29. Ryan...

Gut-wrenching stuff to read from Berkeley professor Robert Reich , the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, along with being an economic adviser for Barack Obama. Once again, it shows how Paulsen and Bernake have sold out this country for their friends once again. Especially the auto industry's workers who have been hurting for years, and look to receive the ultimate blow to their stomachs. Citigroup was once the biggest U.S. bank. General Motors was once the biggest automaker in the world. Now, both are on the brink. Yet Citigroup is likely to be rescued within days. General Motors may not be rescued at all. Why the difference? Viewed from Wall Street, Citi is too big and important to be allowed to fail while GM is simply a big, clunky old manufacturing company that can go into chapter 11 and reorganize itself. The newly conventional wisdom on the Street is that the failure of the Treasury and the Fed to save Lehman Brothers was a grave mistake because Lehman's demise...