Working Life

   A few weeks ago, I noted that the powers-that-be inside Washington had the knives out for the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It’s pretty clear why: this is an agency that, if it works, would shatter the cozy little closed relationship between Wall Street and the regulators (e.g., the Federal Reserve Board) who were […]

Read the full story

Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln and Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may not be in the same political party, but they’re in the same camp when it comes to opposing healthcare. What explains this bipartisan overlap? It’s not surprising that the GOP’s Governator used his veto power to "hasta la vista" child welfare programs, healthcare for the […]

Read the full story

   I often ask the question: why aren’t more of the bankers and Wall Street financiers going to jail for the financial collapse they created with their manipulations and thirst for greed? Not only are they not serving time, but they still have their jobs–while millions of others lost their jobs because of the bursting […]

Read the full story

   We are really going to have to push back against what the meaning of "recovery" is. I am sure you are reading the claims of "recovery" coming from various sources. Today, the OECD weighs in, via a report in The Wall Street Journal: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Thursday said the global […]

Read the full story

   You don’t hear too much about immigration these days. My view has been, for a long time, that immigration cannot be divorced from the economic policies being imposed, largely with the leadership of the U.S. on other countries. If you insist on continuing to ram so-called "free trade" deals down the throats of countries […]

Read the full story

Our problem in the country is not the lack of money or the lack of resources. It is how we set our priorities, whether we choose, for example, to value our communities over corporate special interests (the health care fight is one clear example of that struggle). Today, we see priorities pitted against each other […]

Read the full story

   Some momentum on opening up the Fed to more scrutiny, via The Wall Street Journal: Rep. Ron Paul said he has a commitment from the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, to advance the Texas Republican’s legislation opening the Federal Reserve to broader federal audits. In an interview Friday, Mr. Paul […]

Read the full story

   I get that people want to be optimistic. I am the eternal optimist–I still believe we can change the world to be a better place. But, I am repeatedly astounded at the willingness of people to magnify and overstate the "green shoots" people want to find in the economy. We’ve got a 16-17 percent […]

Read the full story

   There has been a lot of handwringing about the long-term debt forecasted by the Administration (a quick observation, in case there is confusion: the fiscal deficit is the annual gap between what comes into the government and what is paid out; the country’s debt is the accumulated gaps from the annual deficits). For example: […]

Read the full story

   The Change To Win Investment Group is calling for the removal of the CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey. The reason, in part: Following the publication of Mr. Mackey’s op-ed piece opposing President Obama’s health care reform proposal on August 16, 2009, Whole Foods customers have reacted with outrage: at least 26,000 have now […]

Read the full story