Cartooning Obama's economics

The best part of "Obamanomics" -- and I use that word only in the relative sense -- deals with the current mortgage crisis. Talbott has won praise in the past for his early prediction that the real estate industry would tank, and one must take him seriously when he suggests that we're a mere 18 months into what promises to be a five- to seven-year downturn. "[W]e can expect real home prices to decline further, some 25 to 30 percent nationally, and 40 to 50 percent on the coasts and in Las Vegas and Phoenix," he warns. "Everything to date has been prologue."

But such insights are all too rare. Barack Obama has a lot to say about how to achieve economic justice in this country. Unfortunately, in trying to help make the case, Talbott doesn't do his chosen candidate any justice whatsoever.

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Rick Wartzman, former business editor of The Times, is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book, "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath,' " will be published in September.