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David Dayen

Incoming (arriving June 1) American Prospect executive editor David Dayen is a contributing writer to Salon.com who also writes for The Intercept, The New Republic, and The Fiscal Times. His first book, Chain of Title, about three ordinary Americans who uncover Wall Street's foreclosure fraud, was released by The New Press on May 17, 2016.

Recent Articles

How Republicans Imperil Their Own Tax Cuts

Their House and Senate budget resolutions are miles apart—which endangers reconciliation, which endangers tax cuts, which endangers what’s left of the GOP agenda.

David DayenOct 20, 2017
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, flanked by Senators John Thune and John Cornyn, announces to reporters that the Senate is moving ahead on a Republican budget plan at the Capitol on October 17, 2017. A ny hope of a GOP legislative victory in this session of Congress has come down to a vote on the 2018 budget resolution. And despite the conventional wisdom, there’s no definitive path yet for Republicans to actually get that done. The respective chambers have cobbled together wildly different versions of the budget, mirroring the broad ideological differences within the party. Leaders express confidence that some compromise will be reached. But hard-right members, emboldened by the implosion of the GOP establishment, haven’t exactly warmed to compromise during the first nine months of this year. The budget resolution, mainly an aspirational framework for future funding appropriations that creates no new spending authority, is only important because...

Puerto Rico Devastation Could Lead to National Public Health Crisis

Some critical prescription drugs are only made on the island, and Hurricane Maria halted production at dozens of pharmaceutical factories.

David DayenOct 06, 2017
(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) Firefighters arrive at a hospital in Rio Piedras after the failure of the electrical plant in San Juan on September 30, 2017. B efore he gained acclaim for standing up to Google— losing his position at a think tank as a result—the Open Markets Institute’s Barry Lynn had carved a niche as a lonely voice speaking out about fragile global supply chains. His 2006 book End of the Line begins with the story of a deadly 1999 earthquake in Taiwan that shut down so many critical semiconductor factories that practically the entire manufacturing sector for consumer electronics temporarily seized up. When globalization opened up markets around the world, companies sought cheap labor to manufacture their goods. This combined with a revolution in just-in-time logistics to centralize production in specific locations, making supplies of virtually everything we rely on more exposed to unforeseen events. Because Lynn was, well, a lonely voice, this man-made danger never got...

The Ultimate Anti-Competitive Mergers

“Fintech” is promoted as great for consumers. Mainly it’s about more market power.

David DayenSep 21, 2017
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma A poster advertising GMAC services is posted at a GM/Chrysler dealership in Oakland, California. W hen you need a new mortgage in the future, will your only options be AmazonWellsFargo or AppleChase? The prospect of a mash-up of banking and commerce keeps people like George Washington University law professor Arthur Wilmarth up at night. “This would mean an end to healthy innovation and startups and competition,” said Wilmarth. “I think it is that dire.” Wilmarth sees the seeds of a new era of conglomerates in a series of actions by federal regulators and small firms to allow “fintech,” or financial technology companies, to become FDIC-insured banks. In June, SoFi, which offers student loan refinancing and wealth management services for high-income young people, applied for an “industrial loan company” charter in Utah, and early this month, the payment processing company Square followed suit . The Utah loophole has long been a back door for banks to get into...

Puerto Rico’s Double Whammy: Irma and Hedge Funds

The fiscal constraints the island’s bondholders have inflicted will make hurricane recovery very difficult.

David DayenSep 08, 2017
(AP Photo/Ramon Tonito Zayas)
(AP Photo/Ramon Tonito Zayas) Governor Ricardo Rossello looks at the damage from Hurricane Irma on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra. I rma, the largest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, has proven cruelly fickle as it surges through the Caribbean. The Category Five storm “ hit like a bomb ” on the small islands of Barbuda and St. Martin , destroying up to 95 percent of the structures and rendering the areas “ barely habitable .” But Irma stayed north of Puerto Rico, sparing the island from the worst. That’s not to say that Puerto Rico didn’t sustain damage. Three people died , according to Governor Ricardo Rossello, and nearly one million households are without power. That’s about two-thirds of all electricity customers on the island, and the outages could linger for up to six months , according to a preliminary report released before the storm hit. Backup generators have only about 40 percent of the hospitals operating. Persistent rains—up to 12 inches in parts—could make...

Want to Bring Down Drug Prices? Go After the Middleman

“Pharmacy benefit managers”—companies that claim to lower prices—actually jack them up.

David DayenAug 11, 2017
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File) A CVS store in Chicago in 2012 A sk any member of Congress what their constituents ask them about most and they’ll probably cite the high cost of prescription drugs. There’s enough anxiety about it to generate space for a bipartisan solution . But the battle over saving Obamacare has dominated Washington, leaving no room for considering improvements to the health system. Even the fixes now being discussed mostly fall under the heading of ameliorating individual market exchanges. Prescription drug costs are somehow seen as a separate issue from health care. Where Congress won’t act, an angry public is stepping into the breach. An important set of lawsuits target one of the biggest causes of higher prices—the middlemen that game the pharmaceutical supply chain by extracting profits from practically every player. Eventually, that gouging gets passed down to consumers. All of which shows why, if we’re truly going to overhaul the health-care system, we...

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