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President Obama is about to enter into difficult talks on the debt ceiling and the impending fiscal cliff. A group of historians who met with Obama during his first term suggested he should model his second term on Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who fought with a hostile Congress yet managed to pass progressive legislation.
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Host Rachel Martin speaks with NPR's Shankar Vedantam about the psychology behind the fiscal cliff negotiations. Vedantam says humans evolved as short-term thinkers, which makes dealing with the long-term problem of the national debt particularly difficult.
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Paul Ryan gained national attention and praise from conservatives with bold proposals to cut the deficit and balance the budget. But critics say the Republican vice presidential nominee's talk doesn't match his record. To others, he is more a small-government conservative than a deficit hawk.
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Guest host Linda Wertheimer recaps the favorite "big ideas" of four high-profile economists, who raise questions about predicting crises, solving them and scanning brains for decision-making functions.
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Mortgage debt is falling, but still high. Student debt is rising.
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The nonpartisan analysis arm of Congress has released its latest forecasts on the budget and the economy.
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On today's Planet Money: The legend of the national debt. Where the debt came from, what happened the one time we paid it all off, and who came up with the whole debt-ceiling idea in the first place.
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A new study showing that Americans lost nearly 40 percent of their wealth in the Great Recession turned up another notable result: Credit card debt also fell sharply; the median family's balance tumbled 16 percent. But it's not just because people rushed to pay off their plastic.
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In 2008, Kimberly Fague was diagnosed with organ failure. Plagued by nausea, she lost a third of her body weight. She suffered from confusion and constant…
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Accretive Health, under fire for how it collects on health care debts, is fighting back. The company has lined up some political luminaries, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to press its case.