The 2012 election was the first since the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United and the most expensive in U.S. history. But not much changed. Host Michel Martin discusses the impact of unlimited cash with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
A second term means some new Cabinet appointments for President Obama, including at the Treasury. After four pretty grueling years, Secretary Timothy Geithner has made it clear he will be leaving Washington.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said last week that Geithner would be staying on through the inauguration. He's also expected to be a "key participant" in "fiscal cliff" negotiations.
The Treasury secretary was arguably the most important Cabinet post in the first Obama administration. Secretary Geithner had wobbly banks, auto bailouts and the Great Recession on his plate. The next secretary will face big challenges too, beginning with the "fiscal cliff" and working with Republicans to craft a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction.
It's not surprising that there's been a lot of talk about Erskine Bowles as a replacement for Geithner. Bowles chaired the president's deficit reduction panel, the Simpson-Bowles commission. Speaking on Charlie Rose's show last March, Bowles outlined the content of a good budget deal.
"Any of them that don't address defense, any of them that don't address Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and don't reform the tax code and aren't balanced in some way between that, aren't serious," he said.
Bowles was a chief of staff for President Clinton. He's also a former investment banker and is popular with Republicans and on Wall Street. But he's criticized President Obama's budget publicly while praising Paul Ryan's.
A more likely choice might be Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and formerly the president's budget director. In April 2011, he discussed overhauling Social Security:
"It's never really moved the debate forward for one side or another to put a plan out there. It's only really worked well when the parties come together; that's what happened in 1983," he said.
Lew worked on that 1983 Social Security fix as an aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He has Capitol Hill experience and the budget expertise to tackle the big issues that are on the Treasury's plate. And he's got a good working relationship with the president.
One scene has become increasingly common amid Spain's economic crisis: Thousands of people, many of them immigrants, are searching trash dumpsters by night. Some scour the garbage for food, but many others are involved in a black-market trade for recycled materials.
The scavengers have slowly become a sad fixture in many barrios across Spain, like the well-dressed, middle-aged man on a Barcelona street corner on a recent night. He averts his eyes from onlookers as he reaches his arm down deep into a dumpster.
He's embarrassed, he says, that Spain's economy has left him searching through trash. He's afraid to give his name, but willing to tell his story: He's Pakistani, and came to Spain four years ago to work in construction — an industry that collapsed shortly after he arrived. Now, he's left scavenging.
"Here, take a look at this," he says, describing what he's found. "This is junk metal, but it's worth a bit of money."
Selling stuff like this, he says, is his only work now.
"Look, over here there's some food," he says, lifting a few unbroken eggs out of a crate from a separate dumpster for organic waste.
Scavenging For Cash
Although food can be useful, the man concentrates on looking for plastic cable or copper wire. He worked construction just long enough to make contacts with builders who, these days, are desperate for cheap materials.
"See this? This is expensive," he says, showing off a cable. "But this other stuff over here, not as much. It's cheaper."
Enlarge Richard van der AA/Demotix/Corbis
A man searches through trash bins in Girona, Spain. Across Spain, people are increasingly dumpster diving for scraps of food or metal.
Officials in Washington are still trying to make sense of the sudden resignation last week of CIA Director David Petraeus. More details are emerging about the extramarital affair that brought Petraeus down. It came to light following an FBI investigation, which was not focused originally on the CIA director but soon led to him.