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Chris Hedges
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By Chris Hedges
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Flickr / Lacie Babenco (CC-BY-SA)
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The troubled, bankrupted, bailed-out, reinvented automaker had a record day on Wall Street, potentially raising $23.1 billion, and the White House is breathing a sigh of relief. But as the BBC’s Paul Adams cautions, it will be a while before the taxpayers get their money back.
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By Joe Conason — The facts about earmarks—and the deficit, for that matter—are so simple that even the dumbest birther should be able to understand.
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White House
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By Ruth Marcus — I read “Decision Points” and it turns out that George W. Bush is the Edith Piaf of fiscal policy: He regrets nothing.
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By Eugene Robinson — “Why don’t they fight back?” That’s the question I’ve been hearing from the Democratic Party’s stunned and dispirited base.
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By Ruth Marcus — The day after his shellacking, the bruised president offered a sober, tripartite analysis of voters’ message.
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By Richard Reeves — Washingtonians giggle at the new and the recycled anti-Washington loudmouths coming or coming back to our capital city. There are no outsiders inside the Beltway.
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By Joe Conason — The fleeting thrill of ousting a particular elected official (or even dozens of them) ultimately will not bring much comfort to anyone inspired by more than mere partisan fury.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama allowed Republicans to define the terms of the nation’s political argument for the past two years and permitted them to draw battle lines the way they wanted. Neither he nor his party can let that happen again.
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By William Pfaff — The European Union’s leaders, Germany and France, decided Oct. 30 to try to change the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. This is a highly charged and divisive move.
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AP / Ann Heisenfelt
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By Robert Scheer — Barack Obama deserved the rebuke he received at the polls for a failed economic policy that consisted of throwing trillions at Wall Street but getting nothing in return. His amen chorus in the media is quick to blame everyone but the president for his sharp reversal of fortunes.
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By Ruth Marcus — Good afternoon. Well, we got thumped. I’m disappointed, but I continue to believe that our actions were necessary and correct.
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By David Sirota — What could cause the intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If there is one candidate who truly wishes that Christine O’Donnell had not won the Republican senatorial nomination in Delaware, it is the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey.
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Flickr / Fibonacci Blue (CC-BY)
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By Stanley Kutler — While our media wizards report a groundswell of anger against the president, tea party candidates and financiers appear to be as bothered by the policies of Franklin Roosevelt as those of Barack Obama.
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Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
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So, remember that whole bailout thing that began a couple of years ago? It’s not over yet, at least not when it comes to those delinquent housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to new government projections, the Fannie and Freddie bailout fiasco could ... (continued)
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By Amy Goodman — The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts.
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AP / Ermindo Armino
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By Yasha Levine — Tea party candidates say big government is tyranny, but they don’t object when the tyranny flows their way in the form of taxpayer funded farm subsidies.
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Flickr / Clyde Robinson (CC-BY)
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AIG plans to start paying back the taxpayers some of the $182 billion it borrowed, but the plan involves trading the government’s preferred shares in the company for common stock, a move that ought to raise at least one eyebrow.
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By Joe Conason — The disaffection and demoralization of Democrats have created a dangerous political vacuum that is being filled with misleading data, urban legends and outright lies.
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By Robert Scheer — The big cop-out in much of what has been written about the banking meltdown has been the argument by those most complicit that there was “enough blame to go around” and that no institution or individual should be singled out for accountability. “How could we have known?” is the refrain of those who continue to pose as all-knowing experts.
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AP / Elise Amendola
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By Chris Hedges — Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter.
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Flickr / Jim Champion (CC-BY-SA)
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Judging by their television commercials, the Democrats aren’t too thrilled with their legislative accomplishments. A New York Times analysis of ads finds that Republican candidates bring up health care, for instance, more often than the opposition and some Democrats don’t even identify themselves by party.
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By David Sirota — Thirty years into the neoliberal experiment, the Great Recession is exposing the flaws of the Washington Consensus.
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By Amy Goodman — The massive recall of salmonella-infected eggs, the largest egg recall in U.S. history, opens a window on the power of large corporations over not only our health, but over our government.
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Flickr / Brian Cantoni (CC-BY)
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GM’s outgoing CEO likes to complain about the government’s 61 percent stake in the reborn company, but thanks to all that Washington meddling, GM has gone from losing $88 billion over four years to making a couple of billion in six months.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Bill Boyarsky — Broadway and Central Avenue in the Watts area of South Los Angeles are lined with dozens of small, marginal businesses, but hardly any banks. In a capitalist economy, these are streets without capital, losers in the race to the top.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Rep. Maxine Waters may be in deep ... trouble if she’s found guilty of the trio of ethics charges that a House committee hit her with Monday. The congresswoman apparently plans to contest the violations ... (continued)
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AP / Carlos Osorio
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A $26 billion aid package was passed by the Senate on Thursday that aims to ensure that school districts and states do not have to can tens of thousands of teachers and government workers. Just two Republicans crossed the ideological aisle to support the bill, which now heads to the House.
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By Ruth Marcus — After reading the ethics reports on Reps. Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters, the obvious question is: What is wrong with these people? The tempting answer: They’re members of Congress.
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house.gov
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Rep. Maxine Waters, a stalwart progressive voice in the House for nearly 20 years, is defending herself against charges that she improperly intervened to help bail out a bank with ties to her husband. Waters released a statement denying any wrongdoing, saying she was merely working on behalf of minority banks.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Who could have imagined that the bailout of the auto industry, one of the single most unpopular moves by the Obama administration, would become one of its best talking points?
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Sticks and stones and all that: U.S. bankers are probably glad today that, as the childhood rhyme claims, “words can never hurt me,” since the Obama administration’s so-called pay czar has decided to criticize them for paying out $1.6 billion in extra payments to top execs after they received federal bailout funds—but not seek any punishment.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By Robert Scheer — Thanks to the defection of the two relatively enlightened Republican senators from Maine and the quick replacement of the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, unemployment checks that had been stalled for millions of American families since early June will soon resume. But for Republicans, it has been a defining issue that will haunt the party.
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Those of us who have stood aghast and watched as Goldman Sachs seemed to sail almost unscathed through the erupting economic catastrophe of the last two years (thank you, bailout!) might stop now for a moment of pure schadenfreude, as the megabank’s profits took a precipitous dive in the second quarter of this year.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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American International Group, 80 percent owned by the U.S. government, has announced it will pay out $725 million in a settlement of a securities fraud lawsuit, begun in 2004, that accused the insurance Gargantua of accounting fraud and stock manipulation.
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AP / Carolyn Kaster
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By Robert Scheer — The flight from reason that now marks American public discourse came home for me last Friday when I found myself on public radio debating whether Barack Obama is anti-business.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — It’s not working. Time for the president to concede that the economy is at best stagnating and at worst about to take another steep nose dive.
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If you thought tea party politics were just for rabid wingnuts and certain Twitter-prone politicians, think again or else you may miss out on some hot stock market action before the November elections.
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senate.gov
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“False security is no security at all,” writes the Wisconsin senator, who says he will not vote for the financial reform bill because it would not prevent another meltdown and “has Wall Street’s fingerprints all over it.” According to Feingold, “the administration and conference leaders have gone to significant lengths to avoid making the bill stronger.”
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Photo illustration from White House photo by Pete Souza
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A devastating report in The New York Times documents how Timothy Geithner’s New York Fed worked tirelessly to make sure that AIG was forced to pay banks such as Goldman Sachs 100 percent on dubious contracts that might otherwise have been slashed or subjected to lawsuits. (continued)
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By Ruth Marcus — To hijack the horrors of the Holocaust and slavery in the service of a political campaign demeans the candidate and, worse, dishonors the victims. Decency demands that some comparisons be off-limits.
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Flickr / frozenchipmunk (CC-BY)
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With a relative drop in the bailout bucket, the president thinks he can save 300,000 teachers who would otherwise be kept by economic calamity from annoying America’s children. The money would go to state and local governments struggling to make ends meet.
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By David Sirota — Someone is going to bear the massive cost of damage to the Gulf Coast economy, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is out to make sure it isn’t the oil firms whose rig caused the catastrophe in the first place.
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On Thursday Robert Scheer responded to reader questions and comments about his column “Blame Clinton, Not Paul.” Scheer said, “both Democrats and Republicans have betrayed the interests of black and brown people and those who got stuck with subprime mortgages, and that’s the pressing civil rights issue right now.”
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AP / Petros Giannakouris
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By Chris Hedges — Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out.
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Wikimedia Commons
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People close to the case are claiming that AIG executive Joseph Cassano will not face federal charges related to allegations that he misled investors over the company’s handling of mortgage-related securities prior to the economic crash and subsequent Wall Street bailout.
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Flickr / Council of Europe
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The German Parliament has approved a series of measures allowing the country to provide up to $184 billion in loan guarantees in a package aimed at stabilizing the euro and helping support those European nations that are mired in debt.
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What Obama hasn’t learned about offshore oil drilling, why Steve Jobs and Apple want to offer “freedom from porn,” and how GM bamboozled the country into thinking it repaid its bailout money.
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AP / Amy Sancetta
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By Moshe Adler — Don’t be fooled by newspaper reports claiming that higher unemployment is somehow good news—it isn’t.
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When big financial institutions got themselves into a serious pickle in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve was there with beaucoup bucks in loans to prop them up. On Tuesday, the Senate voted unanimously to launch an inquiry into the Fed’s lending practices during the financial crisis.
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