Working Life

   Is anybody shocked by this?: For months, Wall Street banks and the troubled automakers feverishly protested that their top executives would flee if they were not lavishly rewarded for their talents. New data, however, suggests the departures were more of a trickle than a flood. Of the 104 senior executives whose pay was set […]

Read the full story

* John Boehner looks like a naughty frat boy showing off in front of "bro’s" when he shouts "Hell’s no" * Less than ten votes btwn civilization & Nazi Communist Black Panther Muslim Socialist government takeover! * "No You Can’t" should be GOP slogan * "It is the responsibility of this house 2 defend these […]

Read the full story

   There are roughly 400 amendments being proposed to the financial reform legislation proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd. I’ve written previously that I think that the legislation is, at best, a modest step forward. Many of the amendments are aimed at weakening reform and are being pushed by the financial inustry’s lobbying machine.     One […]

Read the full story

   My colleague David Sirota writes in his column about Democrats: First, their leaders campaign on pledges to create a government insurer (a "public option") that will compete with private health corporations. Once elected, though, Democrats propose simply subsidizing those corporations, which are (not coincidentally) filling Democratic coffers. Justifying the reversal, Democrats claim the subsidies […]

Read the full story

   This was in the Financial Times today: A US bank regulator joined financial executives on Wednesday in calling for changes to consumer protection rules proposed by Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate banking committee. “In every case consumer protection has the edge and will trump safety and soundness and I think that is […]

Read the full story

   The healthcare bill is a mess–it won’t cover all Americans at affordable costs and it will hand insurance companies tens of billions of dollars in new profits, the hard-earned wages of working people who are already stressed out financially.    The only ray of light down the road to fix this, if you just […]

Read the full story

   There is a lot of talking about the coming debt burden on companies: Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets. […]

Read the full story

    Chris Dodd has put his regulatory reform bill on the table. Bottom line: it is, at best, average–and certainly does not do what needs to be done to remake the rules of the economy.     The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is giving the Federal Reserve Board more power, particularly placing consumer protection in […]

Read the full story

I have been dismayed at the willingness to let the Wall Street executives off the hook–allowing them to walk free, continue to collect bonuses and salaries and even give them jobs in government after they conducted what was perhaps the biggest fraud in financial history. We cannot let them escape justice. And, based on the […]

Read the full story

   Conventional wisdom–along with a great dose of greed and blind faith in a failed economic model–caused the immediate economic crisis we are still deeply mired in. Every day, brings another does of conventional wisdom. Here is one from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. household wealth fell by $14 trillion during the recession, sapping confidence […]

Read the full story