Working Life

It’s hard to pick out, in the world we live in, the greatest of all farces. But, certainly, a top-tier candidate would be the repeated, mind-numbing instances when a Wall Street financier or a big bank pays a massive fine to avoid litigation but is allowed to present the fiction that it did nothing wrong. Everyone knows the law was violated. But, only the big fish get to pretend like it never happened. Well, maybe there is a very tiny crack in the facade of these farces, which could bring, some day, the practice to an end.

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So, Wall Street got to really fuck workers once — when the greedy bastards who cratered the economy with their foolish games, they put millions of people into the streets, people who lost their jobs because of the greed. While not a single high-ranking financial leader is in jail, the greedy bastards are coming back for a second time to fuck workers — this time trying to screw them out of pensions.

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   A few months ago, I spent 5-6 hours interviewing Paul Krugman for Playboy magazine. It’s now on-line here. He speaks candidly–surprise–about the economic misdeeds of Wall Street, the foolishness of the current austerity obsession and focus on the non-existent debt crisis, and a whole range of topics including his view that the Obama Administration [...]

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    In some ways, the worst phenomena in political and public life is the way in which we–the people–give over power to the financial and corporate elite partly because we internalize marketing phrases and economic nonsense beaten into our brains over 30 years by the brain-dead traditional media and a capitulation by the political leaders [...]

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   On the face of it, it’s a good thing when the labor movement leverages the trillions of dollars–yes, that’s TRILLIONS–that sit in pension funds. It’s been a topic of debate for a long time. The question is: what do we get? Here is the example, via The Wall Street Journal: New York Gov. Andrew [...]

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Gupta. Rajaratnam. Blaring headlines are a potentially dangerous distraction from the truth: the bankers responsible for the economic catastrophe that wiped out millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth are still free and clear, reaping tens of millions of dollars more and laughing all the way to next purchase of a yacht or [...]

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   It is always a good thing to start the morning with a strong cup of black coffee (no milk, no sugar, thank you) and a good, loud belly laugh. Absurdity is often the root of a good laugh. Exhibit #1 today: Wall Street is now unhappy with the president and some of those characters [...]

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   Oh, no. Here we go again. We’ll have to endure yet another round of Clinton nostalgia: In the book, titled “Back to Work,” Mr. Clinton will make the case for why government matters, explaining his ideas on energy, job creation and financial responsibility, his publisher said Thursday.    You mean we’re going to get [...]

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   People sometimes repeat certain phrases because they’ve heard them used repeatedly when they actually want to say something else, even if they aren’t conscious. Or, put another way–if you want to know why Democrats lost the special election in New York, I’d argue it has a lot to do with the Obama Administration’s failure [...]

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   When I wrote the "The Audacity of Greed" in 2008, I had a chapter called "Vodka and Penises" which detailed a rather unique birthday party thrown in Sardinia, Italy, in 2000 by Tyko CEO Dennis Kozlowski in honor of his wife–it featured vodka spraying from the penis of a replica of Michelangelo’s David. Kozlowski, [...]

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   I find myself laughing at this–part in disgust and part in admiration for a group of people who have no shame and just do not care what happens to regular people in the country. On the one hand, we have a monumental jobs catastrophe underway. And, on the other hand, you have the people [...]

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Last week, I posted a piece, suggesting that the current crisis was really about us and the lack of a movement, not about Obama. A number of people reacted, in emails to me, particularly about the Three Grand Myths–and, over the weekend, I heard yet more nonsense on the Three Grand Myths theme. So, I [...]

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    The anger against the president that has been rocketing around many circles of liberal/progressive politics is misplaced.     The crisis we face isn’t about what the president is doing, or failing to do.     We are under siege, fighting the greatest class warfare in perhaps 100 years. And we can expect very [...]

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    I’ve maintained for a long time that the civil fines levied against Goldman Sachs ($550 million) and J.P. Morgan ($153 million) for their roles in the financial crisis scam amounted to peanuts–costs that will be ultimately passed on to consumers and shareholders. If a financial executive could aid and abet a massive fraud and [...]

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   Every day, there is a new joke about the economy–though, the joke is a cruel one on most normal people and unfortunately, the transcribers of the news (nee "journalists") don’t get the jokes largely because they are (a) really dumb and/or (b) don’t really care and/or (c) are so wrapped up in being "serious" [...]

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    The answer to this question would appear to be obvious. But, it needs constant reinforcing–as you will see from the debate (if you can call it that) last night between yours truly and Larry Kudlow and a stooge from the right wing. It’s almost laughable and entertaining–if the consequences weren’t so dire. The subject [...]

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