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The big political story this week was an argument between the Obama and Romney campaigns about whether or not Romney would have killed Osama Bin Laden, were he president. As the New Yorker's John Cassidy observed, the argument was actually beside the point -- it was a piece of calculated political distraction by the White House. He explains to Bob how it worked, and what news we missed as a result.

New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy talks about the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes and whether it can work to pull us out of the economic recession. Today, many regard Keynes as the economist whose sweeping theory remains the best solution to our current woes, but conservative economists insist that Keynes’s ideas have failed to work. Cassidy’s article “The Demand Doctor” appeared in the October 10, 2011, issue of The New Yorker.

New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy looks at whether Islam is responsible for the lagging economies of many Arab countries. His article “Prophet Motive” appears in the February 28 issue of The New Yorker.

John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker, discusses his recent article "What Good is Wall Street", which argues that the work investment bankers do today is socially worthless.

Joshua Green, Senior Editor of The Atlantic, and John Cassidy,New Yorker staff writer, talk about Timothy Geithner’s role as chief architect of Obama’s plan to fix the economy, and why his plan has made him unpopular. Joshua Green’s article “Inside Man” appears in the April issue of ...

John Cassidy explains that behind the headlines about job losses, bank bailouts, and corporate greed lies a little-known story of bad ideas. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, looks at what happens when markets don’t work—when they lead to stock market bubbles, extreme inequality, real estate crashes, ...

The financial reform bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chair of the Senate Banking Committee, would dramatically change the way U.S. banks are monitored. But with resistance from both Republicans and Democrats, the bill is unlikely to pass through the Senate before the end of the year. Here to tell us more about it is our Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich, along with John Cassidy, New Yorker staff writer and author of the book, "How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities."

 

All this week we’re telling the stories behind the unraveling of our financial system in two minutes or less. Today, we look at the credit freeze. This segment contains excerpts from an interviews we conducted with Margaret Atwood and The New Yorker’s John Cassidy. You can hear the full interviews ...

PBS's "Frontline" investigates the inside stories of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the $700 billion dollar bailout in "Inside the Meltdown". Frontline producer Michael Kirk and New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy join us. The documentary airs tonight at 9 pm on PBS.

John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Dot.Con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era, explains why Ben Bernanke did what he did during the economic meltdown.

The man at the center of the current U.S. financial crisis is Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The Takeaway talks to New Yorker Staff writer John Cassidy, who profiled Bernanke for his latest piece, "Anatomy of a Meltdown."