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$3.99
By David K. Shipler
$35
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Shutterstock graphic of stocks falling.
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The Federal Reserve will continue to buy bonds at a rate of $85 billion a month, but Chairman Ben Bernanke said better economic indicators mean the central bank could end its quantitative easing policy in 2014.
Posted on Jun 19, 2013
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SeanPavonePhoto / Shutterstock.com
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By Robert Reich — There are two great centers of unaccountable power in the American political-economic system today—places where decisions that significantly affect large numbers of Americans are made in secret, and are unchecked either by effective democratic oversight or by market competition.
Posted on Jun 16, 2013
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Image via Shutterstock
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By Robert Reich — The recent jubilance among economic forecasters is enough to make even weather forecasters blush. “Just look at the bull market! Look at home prices! Look at consumer confidence!” I can understand the jubilation in the narrow sense that we’ve been down so long everything looks up. But prophecies can’t be self-fulfilling if they’re based on wishful thinking.
Posted on Jun 2, 2013
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Journalist Robert Kaiser has written a case study of the passage of Dodd-Frank, the legislation that kind of sort of took a shot at maybe re-regulating Wall Street (but not really). He tells Judy Woodruff, “It was upsetting to me as a citizen to realize how few members understood the issues they were dealing with.”
Posted on May 29, 2013
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AP
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By Robert Scheer — The big banks’ influence in Washington has only grown in direct proportion to the harm they have caused to the nation’s economy.
Posted on May 27, 2013
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sdh_zh (CC-BY)
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By Robert Reich — Forbes magazine likes to call itself a “capitalist tool,” and routinely offers tool-like justifications for whatever it is that profit-seeking corporations want to do.
Posted on May 27, 2013
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Luojie, Cagle Cartoons, China Daily, China —
Posted on May 27, 2013
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SeanPavonePhoto / Shutterstock.com
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By Robert Reich — Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats? With the help of congressional Democrats, the Street is rolling back financial reforms enacted after its near meltdown.
Posted on May 26, 2013
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By Robert Scheer — Tumblr shunned advertising and earned the trust of its users, but Yahoo undoubtedly has other plans.
Posted on May 20, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of EU roundtable.
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By William Pfaff — It is not simply the euro zone that is threatened by the dramatic economic discrepancies that now exist among its members. Now it is the European Union itself that is in danger.
Posted on May 14, 2013
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AP/Cliff Owen
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By Robert Scheer — How astonishing to have a public servant who actually cares to inform the public about the inner workings of the system of crony capitalism that has wedded big government with big business.
Posted on May 14, 2013
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Image via Shutterstock
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The richest Americans made trillions during the so-called economic recovery from 2009 to 2011, while most everyone else’s net worth dropped, according to a recent study. “It’s as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich,” Les Leopold writes at AlterNet. “And that’s no accident.”
Posted on May 5, 2013
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Shutterstock image of bank.
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Now that Wall Street has managed to neuter and delay the modest reforms passed by Congress, there is more political momentum to pass stricter financial regulations.
Posted on May 1, 2013
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When female writers disappeared from the Wikipedia heading “American novelists,” more than a few eyebrows were raised; Pvt. Bradley Manning being revoked as grand marshal of the San Francisco Gay Pride parade proves that the military-industrial complex rules all; meanwhile, another price-fixing scandal reminiscent of Libor is about to explode. These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on May 1, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of a bill fragment with blood spots.
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
The already tepid reforms enacted by Dodd-Frank are falling prey to business leaders, Republican lawmakers and the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Posted on Apr 30, 2013
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Capitol Hill image via Shutterstock
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By Robert Reich — What is Washington doing to fix the economy? Worse than nothing. It has now adopted the same kind of austerity economics that’s doomed Europe—cutting federal spending and reducing total demand. And the sequester doesn’t end Sept. 30. It takes an even bigger bite out of the federal budget next fiscal year.
Posted on Apr 29, 2013
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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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A look at the day’s political happenings, including why Dick Cheney says the U.S. is in “deep do do” and Bernie Sanders and Grover Norquist spar over President Obama’s awful budget.
Posted on Apr 11, 2013
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AP/Rich Pedroncelli
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Wall Street sees no need for more regulations of course, but unfortunately for Main Street Americans still reeling from the last financial crisis, President Obama may turn out to be the banking industry’s biggest ally.
Posted on Apr 10, 2013
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AP/Louis Lanzano
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Former Reagan-era budget director David Stockman is under attack by pundits everywhere for confirming that money for Wall Street and nothing for Main Street stands as an upper-class attack on the American public.
Posted on Apr 6, 2013
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© Ahmed Amir (CC BY 2.0)
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A cache of 2.5 million secret files offers the chance to peek behind the curtain of the world’s offshore money market, detailing the involvement of more than 120,000 companies and trusts doing business with politicians, con men and scores of the mega-rich.
Posted on Apr 4, 2013
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AP
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By Robert Scheer — For all of the strident attacks on Stockman’s column, I have yet to read a serious critique of his most brazen claim.
Posted on Apr 2, 2013
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AP/Ron Edmonds
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David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985, leveled some harsh criticism at his former boss as well as at President George W. Bush in an op-ed he penned about the dire state of the economy for The New York Times titled “Sundown in America.”
Posted on Mar 31, 2013
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Campaign rally image via Shutterstock
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By Robert Reich — Recent polls show Americans would rather reduce the deficit by raising taxes than by cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, education and transportation. Yet Congress seems incapable of making that kind of deal. Some 65 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on large corporations, but both parties are heading in precisely the opposite direction.
Posted on Mar 31, 2013
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Max F. Williams (CC BY 2.0)
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By Les Leopold, AlterNet —
North Dakota’s thriving state bank makes a mockery of Wall Street’s casino banking system—and that’s why financial elites want to crush it.
Posted on Mar 30, 2013
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Expressing concerns that “too big too fail” banks have also become “too big to jail,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Wednesday that he will introduce legislation to break up the nation’s biggest financial institutions.
Posted on Mar 28, 2013
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Flickr/Erix!
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By Robert Reich — We’re still legislating and regulating private morality, while ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America.
Posted on Mar 25, 2013
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AP/Alex Brandon
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If Bernanke’s stance is any indication, Sen. Warren, who was just sworn in this January, is already having a positive impact on Washington.
Posted on Mar 21, 2013
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401(k) 2013 (CC-BY-SA)
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The Securities and Exchange Commission says it has won the largest ever settlement in an insider trading suit.
Posted on Mar 15, 2013
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The broadcaster points out that President Obama, just like George W. Bush, is pushing his nominees through the revolving door between regulatory agencies and the banks they’re supposed to oversee.
Posted on Mar 12, 2013
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AP/Mark Lennihan
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By Robert Scheer — The U.S. government exists primarily to make the world safe for multinational corporations, but those firms feel no obligation to pay for that protection in return.
Posted on Mar 12, 2013
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There are, believe it or not, grounds for hoping that the sequester, stupid as it is, might open the way to ending our nation’s budget stalemate.
Posted on Mar 6, 2013
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Flickr / Abeeeer (CC-BY)
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By Robert Reich — On Tuesday the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 14,270. The stock market is basically back to where it was in 2000, while corporate earnings have doubled since then. Yet the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was then and unemployment remains sky-high. Why is the stock market doing so well, while most Americans are doing so poorly? Here are four reasons.
Posted on Mar 6, 2013
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AP/Osamu Honda
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By Robert Scheer — Where is the Occupy movement now that the depravity of the super rich is on full display?
Posted on Mar 5, 2013
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a two-time Truthdigger of the Week, demonstrated once again why big banks and Wall Street want to keep their distance from her when she took on Ben Bernanke during his semiannual appearance before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.
Posted on Feb 26, 2013
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Randy Le'Moine Photography (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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While profits tripled and layoffs commenced in the banking industry last year, Wall Street divided at least $20 billion in gifts made of cash and stock among its employees.
Posted on Feb 26, 2013
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Flickr/Thomas Hawk
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Meet the major banks’ newest partner: payday lenders, the owners of those check cashing stores that offer short-term loans with interest rates that sometimes exceed 500 percent.
Posted on Feb 24, 2013
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By David Sirota — Despite its success in recent elections, and despite the image of unity it projects, the Democratic Party is in the throes of an epic identity crisis pitting its corporate money against its stated principles.
Posted on Feb 22, 2013
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By Joe Conason — Savvy Republicans know that something is deeply wrong with the GOP —frequently mocked these days by Republicans themselves as “the stupid party”—which has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.
Posted on Feb 20, 2013
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AP/Michael Dwyer
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By Alexander Reed Kelly — At a Senate hearing Thursday, Elizabeth Warren exposed and shamed regulators for failing to prosecute banks that played a leading role in the financial crisis.
Posted on Feb 16, 2013
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AP/J. Scott Applewhite
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By Robert Scheer — It is bizarre that Chuck Hagel, a war hero with a long record of sensible views on the deployment of military power, gets blocked as the president’s nominee to run the Pentagon, while Jack Lew, steeped in Wall Street greed, sails through as Treasury secretary.
Posted on Feb 14, 2013
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AP/Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — Here’s a get-out-of-jail-free card, and while we’re at it, take this obscenely huge bonus for having wrecked the economy.
Posted on Feb 1, 2013
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U.S. Navy/MC1 Kenneth G. Takada
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By David Sirota — Four years into his presidency, Barack Obama’s political formula should be obvious.
Posted on Jan 25, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including President Obama naming a new SEC head and Joe Biden dispensing some interesting earthquake advice during a Google+ “Fireside Hangout.”
Posted on Jan 24, 2013
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“How do you expect this to play out over the next few years?” host Thom Hartmann asked economist Michael Hudson on “The Big Picture” this week. “That’s what everybody’s wondering,” Hudson replied. “The economy is going to shrink and shrink and shrink, and the question is whether people are going to go out in the streets ... or whether there’s going to be an actual response saying it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Posted on Jan 12, 2013
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Guantanamo Prisoner’s Case Demonstrates Unfairness of Military Commissions
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