© Ed Stein The economy continues to lurch along, gaining a little bit of steam, then falling back again. Unemployment stays stubbornly around 9%, homes are still being foreclosed at a ferocious rate, and the housing industry remains in a deep funk, Meanwhile, official Washington is consumed with the debate over the debt ceiling. Will […]
© Ted Rall I guess companies would be able to hire people if they were selling more products, but they can’t sell more products because nobody has enough money to buy them, because they are unemployed.
© Nick Anderson As Forbes points out, 94% of the US debt problem comes directly from policies set during the Bush administration. At the end of the Clinton administration, the CBO was projecting a budget surplus of $12.7 trillion, but today it the debt is at $14.3 trillion. How did that happen? About 50% of […]
© Ed Stein The game of chicken over raising the debt limit continues, with Republicans (and some Democrats) vowing that any vote for it will have to be accompanied by deep budget cuts, and tax increases of any kind will not be considered. If Republicans have their way, there’s only one possible outcome. The social […]
You do the math. Speculating in the price of oil is one of the main reasons gas prices are so high. And here’s Republican House Whip Eric Cantor promising speculators that he will fight any financial regulations on them: Of course, it makes sense, since high energy prices are one of the main things hurting […]
The new Fortune 500 listings are out, ranking big corporations by revenue. But the list gets even more interesting if you rank them by profits. Exxon Mobil is #2 by revenue, but they are far and away #1 in profits, making what even Fortune magazine called “astonishing” profits of $35.6 billion dollars. That’s 52 times […]
David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and a former Congressman puts it bluntly “I believe we no longer have free market capitalism and we no longer have a democracy.” What we have instead is “crony capitalism” — a system that is rigged in favor of the financial elite, and […]
In 1946 the article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” was published, laying out the policy of containment that proposed that the best way to defeat the Soviet Union was not to attack it, but to contain it. If the US was able to merely counteract Soviet influence, then the internal problems of their communist system […]
© Matt Bors One of the most important principles of our country is equal opportunity — commonly called the American Dream. When you lose that, you lose everything.
© Jim Morin How do some people get away with blaming the unions and illegal immigrants for our current economic troubles?
Borders Bookstore has filed for bankruptcy and closed 225 stores, putting 6,000 employees out of work. The company is in debt and doesn’t have enough assets to pay off its creditors. But that didn’t stop the CEO from asking the bankruptcy judge for $8.3 million in executive bonuses, including $1.7 million for himself. That’s on […]
To anyone who still believes the nonsense that cutting taxes for the rich will stimulate job creation or the economy, Politico points out that between the year 2000 and 2009, the real amount that people pay in taxes went down by 20%. That’s right, we cut taxes significantly, and what happened? Are we now awash […]
Joseph Stiglitz has a must-read article in Vanity Fair “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%“. The article systematically deconstructs and debunks the many myths of inequality. For example, you probably won’t find any politicians promoting the theory of “trickle-down economics” any more, and yet we are still furiously cutting taxes for the […]
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