|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By William H. Goetzmann
$23.10
 . '/' . substr('9780307592699',-6,3) . '/' . '9780307592699' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Amy S. Greenberg
$30.00
$35
|
|
|
|
|
Good thing for that, too, as the middle and lower classes are clearly still feeling the fallout from Wall Street bandits’ fraudulent scheming. Here, Taibbi names some names and tells Amy Goodman how the architects of our current economic catastrophe got away with their crime ... so far.
|
Flickr / cliff1066™(CC-BY)
|
On Wednesday, newly released minutes from the Federal Reserve’s late-January meeting reflected a more optimistic stance vis-à-vis the next phase of the U.S. economy, but unfortunately, the slightly brighter outlook didn’t extend to the Fed’s take on the job market.
|
YouTube
|
By Aram Sinnreich — The Super Bowl commercial is a shell game. Detroit’s pain isn’t the result of some existential crisis of faith, but a direct consequence of the amoral, profit-seeking behaviors of Chrysler itself.
|
flickr/specialkrb
|
Is it good news that U.S. consumer spending revved up to a three-year high in 2010? It could make for some improvement, especially if employment picks up to bolster Americans’ consumption habits in coming months, according to the BBC.
|
AP / Sang Tan
|
Even though it fell short of economists’ expectations, a 3.2 percent rise in the GDP during the last quarter of 2010 has rekindled hopes that the U.S. economy may be moving toward sustainable recovery.
|
Center for American Progress (CC-BY-ND)
|
Chairman Phil Angelides and the five other Democrats on the 10-person Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have released their devastating report, which assigns blame for the economic meltdown. They pointed at Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (above), among others.
|
Flickr / fatalfuj (CC-BY-SA)
|
Wedged between past years of standardized testing and fixating on applications and a future of paying off hefty loans with no guarantees of employment, first-year college students around the country are registering higher levels of stress and poorer ...
|
White House / Chuck Kennedy
|
By Robert Scheer — What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn’t tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out.
|
Wikimedia Commons / Office of Management and Budget
|
So, the former head honcho of Obama’s Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, is now sitting in a very plush position over at Citigroup, from where he gave his latest economic prognostications in Thursday’s Financial Times ...
|
AP / Rich Pedroncelli
|
By Bill Boyarsky — Covering the statehouse or city hall is regarded as the minor leagues of political journalism. But this year, these too-often-unappreciated scriveners are in the middle of one of the most important domestic stories in decades.
|
|
Despite drawing the wrong kind of attention to themselves over the last two-plus years with news of murky dealings in “structured products” and concern over the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage crisis, execs at Goldman Sachs apparently ...
|
Flickr.com / mindfrieze
|
The Obama administration is working on cutting back defense spending to levels the U.S. hasn’t seen since before Sept. 11, 2001, but the proposed changes have more to do with economic reasons than any big strategic change from within military ranks.
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
By Nomi Prins — There are two potential ways to measure the economic performance of a political leader. One is by the profitability, stock prices and executive bonuses of a nation’s corporations. The other is by the financial condition of the majority of its population.
|
AP / J Pat Carter
|
October wasn’t a good month for sales of single-family homes in the U.S.—in fact, it was pretty dismal—and you know it’s bad when number-crunching economist types say there’s nothing good to say about not only the current moment but the foreseeable future as well.
|
Flickr / kevindooley (CC-BY)
|
An international panel of banking regulators from 27 nations is aiming to crack down on outlandish pay packages for industry executives by proposing a new set of rules that call for more transparency and, wonder of wonders, some correlation between ...
|
Flickr / benklocek (CC-BY)
|
For the second year in a row, the birthrate among American teenagers has dropped, hitting a record low point in 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. So what’s the reason for the good news?
|
AP / Peter Morrison
|
Tens of thousands of people took to the Irish streets Saturday to sound off against an IMF-backed austerity plan that would usher in deep spending cuts and higher taxes.
|
|
The Irish economy is in quite a state, and according to Labor TD (that’s MP in Irish parlance) Pat Rabbitte, some specific people are to blame for Ireland’s plight. One of them just happened to be right next to him ... (continued)
|
Flickr/Jeremy Burgin (CC-BY-SA)
|
According to the government agency with the fun acronym SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2009 was no party in terms of adult Americans’ mental health. (continued)
|
Steven Borowiec
|
By Steven Borowiec — The potentially explosive G-20 meeting in Seoul was smothered before anything spectacular could happen.
|
|
In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have taken over the House, and they’re ready to make some big changes and help everyday Americans by ... focusing on ousting Obama and extending certain extant tax cuts. Oh.
|
AP / Daniel Roland
|
Like a well-financed and politically powerful parent, the European Union has agreed to implement tougher rules for euro zone countries that overspend and over-borrow to “deter bad budgetary behavior” that could lead the currency into yet another crisis.
Posted on Oct 29, 2010
READ MORE 
|
AP / Sang Tan
|
The U.S. economy had a bit of a pickup during this year’s third quarter, showing growth of 2 percent. Meanwhile, the housing market remains limp and high unemployment recalcitrantly hovers at 9.6 percent.
|
|
Jon Stewart was respectful but tough as the president defended his accomplishments and made the case for his party. Highlight of the night: President Obama said “Larry Summers did a heckuva job ...” to which Stewart replied, “You don’t want to use that phrase, dude.”
|
|
Remember the heady days before the Internet bubble went and burst, as bubbles tend to do? California’s Silicon Valley was one of the epicenters of that economic boom, but as this clip from Sunday’s “60 Minutes” illustrates, things look a little different there these days.
Posted on Oct 25, 2010
READ MORE 
|
Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
|
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)
|
AP / Ralph Wilson
|
By Stanley Kutler — Mercifully, the midterm election cycle is nearing its end. Both parties, we learn, are planning their “postmortem assessments.” The Daily Beast’s recent headline is a sign of the times: “Why Obama Can’t Lose in 2012.” Plan ahead.
|
AP / Paul Sakuma
|
By Robert Scheer — How do you foreclose on a home when you can’t figure out who owns it because the original mortgage is part of a derivatives package that has been sliced and diced so many ways that its legal ownership is often unrecognizable?
|
Flickr / respres
|
The Obama administration isn’t ready to help homeowners stay in their homes by imposing a moratorium on repossessions, even though some banks are stopping foreclosures and resales of foreclosed homes and concerns about mortgage fraud are growing.
|
Flickr / clementine gallot (CC-BY)
|
This year’s Nobel Prize in economics goes to a triumvirate of researchers—MIT’s Peter Diamond, Northwestern University’s Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics—whose work focuses on a subject that’s all too apropos these days: unemployment.
|
sonyclassics.com/insidejob
|
By Richard Schickel — I have now sat through Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job”— the nonfiction version of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”— and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis. This does not mean that “Inside Job” is a failure.
|
bbc.co.uk
|
On Wednesday, tens of thousands of people in Spain, Italy, Greece and other European nations registered their disapproval of their governments’ moves to make them bear the brunt of the financial shenanigans that sent the global economy into a downward spiral two years ago.
|
AP / Henny Ray Abrams
|
The good news is that the U.S. stock market has enjoyed its “strongest September in 71 years” thus far this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. The bad news is that September ain’t over yet, and that hopeful trend didn’t quite last through Monday.
|
Flickr / Pablo Alvarado (CC-BY)
|
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession ended in June 2009 after 18 months—the longest downturn since World War II. That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods. Reduced expectations for U.S. economic growth and fears that high unemployment could last longer than previously thought presage more pain to come.
|
Flickr / yomanimus
|
This just in: U.S. households are getting poorer. As the crisis continues to wreak havoc on our economy, new data from the Federal Reserve tells us that U.S. net household worth has dropped $1.5 trillion in the second quarter of 2010 and is down more than $10 trillion since the recession began.
|
|
In appearances on MSNBC and KCRW, Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer is coming out with rhetorical guns blazing to talk about the economic crisis, Wall Street pandering, and the culpability of both parties in all of it.
|
Flickr / edEx
|
As the national unemployment rate hovers quite stably below the double-digit mark, California’s troubled economy continues to dive into despair. The state’s jobless rate rose to 12.4 percent last month, renewing fears that California may fall into a not-so-delicious-as-it-sounds double-dip recession.
|
|
By Robert Scheer — Since the collapse happened on the watch of President George W. Bush at the end of two full terms in office, many in the Democratic Party were only too eager to blame his administration.
|
AP / Charles Dharapak
|
By Robert Scheer — When will the president give Lawrence Summers his pink slip? He can thank him for his years of service and use the excuse that his top economic adviser wants to spend more time with his family. I don’t care how he sugarcoats it.
|
|
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.
|
youtube.com
|
Using the same terminology one might employ to describe the plot of “The Lord of the Rings,” President Obama has agreed that the country’s economic recovery has been “painfully slow” and has indicated he understands the vitriol aimed toward Democrats as the 2010 midterm elections approach.
|
|
By David Sirota — Thirty years into the neoliberal experiment, the Great Recession is exposing the flaws of the Washington Consensus.
|
democracynow.org
|
We’ve heard about the robber barons on Wall Street who brought on our current economic crisis, but they couldn’t have done it without the help of key political players like Bill Clinton, for one, as Robert Scheer tells Amy Goodman in this “Democracy Now!” interview about his new book.
|
Flickr / lisaw1
|
It turns out that maybe being young and liberal isn’t necessarily in our blood after all. Despite historical trends that peg young people as Democrats, a new Pew Research survey suggests that recent economic woes have led fewer 18- to 29-year-olds to identify themselves as Democrats.
|
AP / Mark Lennihan
|
By Howie Stier — In the year 2010, America once again embraced the bread line, and the neatly dressed, solidly middle class, once working folk who queue up are just becoming reconciled to a stark new reality.
|
AP / Reed Saxon
|
Is the recession over? Will there be another? Much like the famous groundhog from Punxsutawney, Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke showed up to offer an eagerly awaited sign—in this case to economists gathered Friday at Jackson Hole, Wyo., and to the world at large ... (continued)
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
By Robert Scheer — Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve.
|
Reuters
|
More evidence that the economy is still very shaky came Tuesday in the form of news about a startling dip in sales of existing single-family homes during July, which marked the lowest point in that market in 15 years.
|
flickr/~Prescott
|
The U.S. economy is still an unholy mess, but someone is doing something right over in Germany, which reported record growth over the three-month period from April through June—the biggest such spike since the once-split nation reunified.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
How the IRS’ Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
