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Sam Harris
$11.53
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By Ron Kovic
$17
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Shutterstock photo of a man holding money.
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
The Financial Transaction Tax, or Robin Hood Tax, would generate more than $300 billion a year in revenue, thereby doing away with the need for the sequester currently forcing across-the-board budget cuts.
Posted on Apr 24, 2013
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HowardLake (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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The new chief executive of the British bank is aiming to clean up his scam-ridden operation by dropping 3,700 employees from its structured capital markets unit and other offices.
Posted on Feb 12, 2013
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Verso Books
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Although Karl Marx discerned in the middle of the 19th century that a new class of capitalists was creating “a world after its own image,” it took until the beginning of the 21st century before “a constantly expanding market” could be said to have fully spread capitalist social relations “over the entire surface of the globe,” write Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin in their new book, “The Making of Global Capitalism.”
Posted on Jan 31, 2013
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Rick McKee, Cagle Cartoons, The Augusta Chronicle —
Posted on Dec 17, 2012
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Pavel Constantin, Cagle Cartoons, Romania —
Posted on Dec 17, 2012
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aresauburn™ (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Figures from the Internal Revenue Service suggest that nonfinance companies based in the United States are holding more than $5 trillion in cash, triple what the Federal Reserve reports—idle money that Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston suggests would be better spent creating jobs, paying dividends and sharing the burden of taxes.
Posted on Jul 20, 2012
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Elliott Brown (CC-BY)
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The BBC reports that while the United States and the U.K. have made a habit of buying too-big-to-fail banks and then looking the other way, the safest banks in the world aren’t just owned but operated by civil governments.
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Dennis Skley (CC-BY-ND)
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By William Pfaff — The extent to which the economic policy of nations is made on the basis of misinformation or wishful thinking is not generally recognized.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The shiny ideal of representative democracy starts dimming a bit when one considers factors and figures like those charted in a new study about U.S. Congress members’ personal finances. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 249 current members are millionaires—that’s about 47 percent. (more)
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White House / Chuck Kennedy
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President Obama and the Democratic National Committee have raised more from the financial industry than all the Republican candidates combined. However, without the DNC, Mitt Romney has raised almost twice as much as the president from that sector, according to analysis by The Washington Post. (more)
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AP / Julie Jacobson
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By Christopher Ketcham — It is clear that nowhere in American commercial life, save perhaps the graveyard, is there a space not polluted by electronic voices.
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AP / Daniel Roland
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European Union financial officials meeting in Brussels have agreed on the setting up of a permanent bailout fund, even as Portugal reportedly teeters on the precipice of financial collapse.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson, surveying the global financial mess, including the pending $112 billion bailout of Ireland’s shaky banking sector, can gloat a bit. His country, he says, is in better shape because it let private banks fail two years ago.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a bastion of pro-business, anti-environment and anti-labor ideology since its founding in 1912. And so it is unsurprising that modern-day corporations have donated millions upon millions to the Chamber to fight such perilous things as, say, security requirements on chemical facilities.
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cityofbell.org
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The city of Bell, Calif., drew quite a bit of unwanted attention to itself last summer with the revelation that several top officials were pocketing ridiculously high salaries at the expense of its citizens. Now it’s looking like payback time, as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is on the case.
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Flickr / International Monetary Fund
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While the International Monetary Fund has historically been an organization used by wealthy countries to assert economic dominance over the rest of the world, developing nations won a small battle Saturday as the IMF moved to increase scrutiny over its rich members, including the United States.
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Here we see the now-viral footage of Swiss finance minister Hans-Rudolf Merz, 67, who is on the brink of retirement and quite able to appreciate the lighter side of some of his bureaucratic duties, such as discussing the apparently amusing matter of cured meat imports.
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AP / Wong Maye-E
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In a spare-no-one, off-the-cuff critique, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker delivered a blistering analysis of the nation’s financial system Thursday, criticizing banks, regulators, business schools, the Fed and money-market funds in a “plea for structural changes in markets and market regulation.”
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Flickr / soathevy
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New rules curbing credit card company shenanigans took effect Sunday, as restrictions on “unreasonable late payment and other penalty fees” will now block the companies from charging excessive levies if users, to cite just one choice example, do not use their cards.
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Flickr / edEx
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In news that reflects the weakening pulse of the economy, the Labor Department reported that initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week to a seasonally adjusted level of half a million, the highest since last November.
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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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Debra Satz’s new book, “Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale,” raises timely and morally difficult questions about capitalism and free choice and collective and individual rights.
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AP / Richard Drew
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After a marathon final negotiating session, Congress has cobbled together a historic overhaul of financial regulations for Wall Street. The bill is expected to win final approval next week and land on President Obama’s desk.
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Flickr / U.S. Treasury Department
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In the face of the stereotypical image of Americans as free-spending consumers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told his international finance colleagues that G20 countries should not rely on American buyers for their products as they travel the road to economy recovery.
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Flickr / kdinuraj
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By day’s end Wednesday, our chums over at the U.S. Senate hadn’t moved much closer to the finish line in dealing with the financial regulation bill, to the chagrin of some senators and, no doubt, the satisfaction of others.
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Will the Goldman Sachs hearings really accomplish anything? Are the Democrats just showboating? What are the prospects for real financial reform? Robert Scheer answers these reader questions and more.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — No leftist polemicist could come up with as damning a description of contemporary capitalism as the contents of an e-mail that Goldman’s Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre sent to his girlfriend.
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By Joe Conason — Discredited as the financial powers are, their wealth alone continues to provide them with wildly disproportionate influence over the political process.
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Wikimedia Commons
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One wonders if there is a smutty equivalent to Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns. If there is, it might be applicable to the senior staffers at the SEC who spent hours watching pornography on government computers instead of policing the nation’s financial system.
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youtube.com
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It seems the GOP’s “make sure nothing happens in government” approach is still going strong, with Senate Republicans blocking an effort by Democrats to begin debate on widely popular legislation to regulate the nation’s financial system.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — For the first time in Obama’s presidency, Republicans are uncertain as to whether resolute opposition to a Democratic idea is in their political interest.
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John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune —
Posted on Apr 19, 2010
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Wikimedia Commons / United States Federal Reserve
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The Federal Reserve announced Thursday it would increase the interest rate for temporary bank loans. The New York Times reports that many on Wall Street see this as signaling an end to big bank profits. But some economists say the move was purely technical, with no real effect on how much money is made.
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United States Treasury
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News that China sold $34 billion in U.S. government bonds at the end of last year has raised the fears of analysts, some of whom think that the move—which involved less than 5 percent of the overall amount of bonds held by China—is meant to signal a loss of confidence in U.S. economic policy.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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Recently disclosed internal documents and an audio recording regarding a 2008 securities standoff between Goldman Sachs and insurance giant AIG appear to be the smoking guns necessary to pinpoint Goldman’s culpability in the mortgage meltdown and the collapse of AIG.
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commons.wikimedia.org / Ramy Majouji
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President Barack Obama wants to slap a new tax on the country’s largest financial institutions in an ostensible attempt to “recover every single dime” given away in 2008’s Wall Street bailout. The tax was met with predictable fat-cat jeers, despite the fact that the industry has largely recovered from the crisis.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If you held a contest to pick the worst thing a politician could be called at this moment, my nominee would be Wall Street Liberal—which is why President Obama’s new fees on the biggest banks comes just in time.
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Flickr / edEx
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After a smidgen of good economic news in November, the U.S. economy unexpectedly shed 85,000 more jobs in December, continuing a nearly two-year trend and keeping the unemployment rate at 10 percent.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By David Sirota — The former financial executives inside the Obama administration have labeled their bill the “Financial Stability Improvement Act,” but it’s more like the 9/11 of bailouts.
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By Joe Conason — Anyone infuriated by the grossly inflated compensation of the masters of finance should check out the incredible earnings of the top executives in the health insurance business.
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gawker.com
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The Obama administration, perhaps getting wise to public opinion, is lashing out at Wall Street firms. White House senior adviser David Axelrod called the huge bonuses executives received this year “offensive” in light of the fact that the rest of us are struggling through an economic crisis.
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southwestga.com
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Woe is still the economy, but several numbers are indicating that the recession might, just might, be easing up. The pace of U.S. job losses has gradually slowed, and the unemployment rate actually dropped in July for the first time in over a year.
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highvolumemedia.com
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In the spirit of the poignant critiques of capitalism made popular by Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI has written a scathing letter just in time for the capitalist G-8 economic summit in Italy that demands we find a “profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise.”
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Flickr / The TruthAbout...
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Some of the country’s major banks are prepared to pay back money they borrowed under the TARP program, but don’t get too excited. The initial repayment is expected to be a meager $50 billion, which Timothy Geithner wants to inject right back into other troubled banks.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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The Toxic Asset Relief Program was originally designed to save the banks from their bad bets by purchasing toxic assets, but has since evolved into something of a multipurpose slush fund. Now the Obama administration is getting back to the business of buying junk, elaborating on a plan that sent the Dow tumbling when it was first announced. Update
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Flickr / Foraggio Fotographic
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By Joe Conason — We suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.
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Flickr / treehouse1977
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If you’re in a good mood, you may just want to skip this bit of news from The New York Times: “Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York ... collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.” Update
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tumblr.com
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The world economy this year is likely to grow at a rate of only 0.5 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund, which re-evaluated its figures after the U.K. officially entered into recession last week. The growth rate, as projected, is the lowest in more than 60 years.
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nation.co.ke
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Without skipping a beat, once-troubled financial entities are continuing to spend big to lobby Congress as they pocket billions in TARP bailout money. The lobbying is defended by the bail-outted firms as a “transparent and effective way” to be heard on policy issues.
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bloomberg.com
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It’s the first full day of Obama’s administration and things are looking a bit different in D.C. Treasury secretary nominee Timothy Geithner called for “fundamental reform” of the $700 billion bailout, claiming the existing bailout package favored big business over struggling families.
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The Lotto Symbolizes the False Promises of Barracuda Capitalism
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