‘Daily Show’: The Notorious A.I.G.

Staff / Truthdig Sep 17, 2008 Whither Lehman Brothers? Et tu, Merrill Lynch? What's going on on Wall Street? Jon Stewart breaks down the financial meltdown on Tuesday night's edition of "The Daily Show" -- complete with '80s monster movie allusions. Sweet! Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Socialism for the Super-Rich

Staff / Truthdig Sep 17, 2008 Here we go again: The Federal Reserve is bailing out another tanking financial institution -- the insurance behemoth American International Group -- by sinking $85 billion into AIG in return for a stake in the company. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a Wall Street investigation following this latest startling agreement between big government and big business. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Earth to McCain: It’s a Crisis

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Sep 17, 2008 Gag me with a spoon, as Valley girls used to say. Did you see that McCain-Palin ad promising “tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings, no special interest giveaways”? Just how dumb do they think we are? Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Bull Market

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com Sep 17, 2008 Dig deeper

McCain Campaign Ads: Impending Economic Cataclysm Edition

Staff / Truthdig Sep 16, 2008 John McCain's campaign would like to nominate -- who else? -- John McCain and Sarah Palin as just the ticket to get Americans out of financial crisis, claiming they'll fight "special interest giveaways" on Wall Street(?!), cut taxes and, of course, drill, baby, drill! Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Fannie and Freddie’s Double Whammy

Bill Boyarsky / Truthdig Sep 9, 2008 With a stunningly vicious pair of blows, the faltering world economy -- the Godzilla of this year's presidential race -- has made the candidates look small. Why hasn't this looming crisis been part of the presidential debate? Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )

Oil Prices Dip, Stocks Rise

Staff / Truthdig Aug 6, 2008 Finally, some slightly better financial news has hit the wires after months of sobering reports: Oil prices dropped to a three-month low on Tuesday, which may be due to "the softening market," as one analyst puts it in this NYT account, but whatever the reason it still means a slight reprieve from weeks of punishing prices. Stock markets had their biggest gains in four months. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Did Bush Put a Hit Out on Fannie, Freddy?

Staff / Truthdig Jul 22, 2008 From madcap marketeer Jim Cramer to wired alt-blogger Scott Thill, there are more than a few braniacs who believe the Bush White House did not just watch the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac but actually engineered it as yet another sortie in the long GOP war against the New Deal. Never fear, though, as The Onion has already written a satirical report on efforts to build a better bubble. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Wall Street Socialism Meets Disaster Capitalism

Staff / Truthdig Jul 16, 2008 Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were always more foul than fish, says Robert Borosage, and the bailout announced by the Treasury secretary over the weekend will mean "private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

The Rise and Fall of Fannie and Freddie

Staff / Truthdig Jul 13, 2008 Although certain Washington denizens from both sides of the aisle might have been thrown when the two government-backed mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hit the skids last week, several of their current and former colleagues had long seen the crisis coming. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Sirota Takes On Colbert … or Is It the Other Way Around?

Staff / Truthdig May 31, 2008 Author and columnist David Sirota braves the Colbert treatment to talk about his (Sirota's) latest book, "The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington," and to brazenly assert that, "People are angry with the status quo -- they think the establishment isn't working for them, and frankly, it's not." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

McCain Piles On in ‘Bitter’ War of Words

Staff / Truthdig Apr 15, 2008 John McCain joined Hillary Clinton in critiquing Barack Obama's characterization of small-town Pennsylvania's (and by extension, perhaps, America's) "bitter" outlook, telling a crowd of magazine and newspaper editors on Monday that Obama's description represented "a contradiction from what I believe America is all about." Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )