Business & Economy

Living Large and in Charge

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Apr 8, 2009 Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn’t he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary? Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Resist or Become Serfs

Chris Hedges / Truthdig Apr 6, 2009 If we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

The Nobelists vs. Obama and Geithner

E.J. Dionne Jr. / Truthdig Apr 2, 2009 The president's plan to bail out the banks reveals a deference to the existing financial system that puts him at odds with Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Putting the ‘Care’ in Health Care

Ellen Goodman / Truthdig Apr 2, 2009 Sadly, we have developed a system that rewards procedures over primary care. The incentives tip toward the kind of medicine that is performed with hands, tools and technology over the medicine that is practiced with eyes, ears and mind. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Close These Refuges for Scoundrels

Joe Conason / Truthdig Apr 2, 2009 The story of former AIG executive Joseph Cassano points up once more how tax and regulatory havens across the world encourage nefarious conduct, lack of transparency, evasion of taxes and corporate criminality. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Cars, Banks and Confusion

Eugene Robinson / Truthdig Mar 31, 2009 The president is telling Detroit to shape up or die while at the same time politely asking Wall Street, whose recklessness and greed caused this economic crisis, if it would be so kind as to accept another heaping helping of taxpayer funds. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Newspapers’ Self-Inflicted Wounds

David Sirota / Truthdig Mar 27, 2009 Most newspaper postmortems insist that decreased ad revenues brought on by the Internet and the recession caused journalism's problems, but a look at the vapid celebrity-obsessed pages of the nation's ever-thinner rags tells a different story. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Global Capitalism: The Suicide Version

William Pfaff / Truthdig Mar 25, 2009 The globalization of the international economy launched as an accidental policy of the Clinton administration has proved to be a destroyer of people, governments and wealth. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )

The Geezer Gang Is Staying on the Job

Ellen Goodman / Truthdig Mar 19, 2009 Amid the talk of generational conflict in these depressed times, there's a chance for the boomer generation to make a virtue -- or a revolution -- out of the necessity of working longer. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Push Back Against AIG’s ‘Best and Brightest’

Joe Conason / Truthdig Mar 19, 2009 Having long flattered themselves as "masters of the universe," the creative financiers of Wall Street and London are today exposed as grifters rather than geniuses, yet their arrogance remains intact. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

If You’re a ‘Little Guy,’ a Contract Means Nothing

Marie Cocco / Truthdig Mar 19, 2009 If only the contracts entered into by shop-floor workers at auto plants were as inviolate as those secured by the incompetent pirates of the American International Group. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

N.Y. Attorney General Investigates AIG’s ‘Staggering’ Bonus Mess

Staff / Truthdig Mar 18, 2009 In a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, reprinted here, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo shares what his office has discovered so far about AIG's scandalous bonuses, which "made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout." Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )