“Fighting November’s U.S. presidential election on Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is unlikely to go well.

The ideas don’t please the right — former Ronald Reagan budget director David Stockman and others are displeased because Ryan would keep Medicare in part and largely postpone the effects of any change. Yet the same proposals greatly animate the left — it can credibly claim that Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman and Republican vice-presidential pick, would partially dismantle Medicare.

On top of this, Ryan’s plan won’t even satisfy the center, when independents apply any kind of reasonable scrutiny. The Congressional Budget Office scores his proposals as likely to increase health-care costs as a percent of gross domestic product — because it would reduce government pooling of insurable risks.

The big opportunity for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and for conservatives more broadly is to choose this moment to pivot against big banks. Ryan is plugged into the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, which has been consistently opposed to megabanks and the subsidies they attract through being too-big-to-fail (talk to Representative Ron Paul).”

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Read Simon Johnson’s full Bloomberg article here