Working Life

    The hedge fund industry–those very close friends of Sen. Chuck Schumer–are apparently finding other ways to avoid paying taxes. Today’s The Wall Street Journal has this story: U.S. lawmakers are examining yet another tax perk enjoyed by hedge funds: Many of these funds lend money like banks, but unlike traditional lenders, often don’t pay […]

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    Guns versus butter. It’s the classic debate that really tells us a lot about our priorities that we set for the kind of society we can expect to live in–how much money a country spends on the military versus how much money is expended on non-military, domestic needs. To perhaps explain the obvious, buying […]

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    It’s been a while since I checked in on the Beast of Bentonville. Turns out that the Beast is not getting a lot of love half way across the world in India. Forbes magazine reports that: Brand recognition isn’t always fun, as retailing giant Wal-Mart is finding out in India. Days after it signed […]

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    Here’s something worth reading–it’s an article by my friend and colleague Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research about the long-term impact of the East Asian financial crisis. It’s called "Ten Years After: The Lasting Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis." Here’s a little from CEPR’s press release on the […]

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The most interesting responses during last night’s presidential "debate" were those on trade, specifically, those answers to Keith Olbermann’s question about whether NAFTA should be scraped or fixed. I admit that I have an abnormal interest in the topic but, to me, it is the defining issue for the future for workers here and abroad. […]

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Today is a significant day for the Democratic presidential race: the unions of the AFL-CIO will be freed up to endorse candidates. But, I suspect that a number of unions may hold back, at least until after Labor Day. Here are a few guesses, some based on information and some wildly speculative and pulled out […]

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A couple of weeks ago, I noted how The Wall Street Journal had acknowledged that John Edwards was dictating the debate in the Democratic Party. Today, he’s doing it again. This time on global trade, the issue that I believe defines the future for workers throughout the globe.    Today, Edwards is unveiling a comprehensive […]

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    One of the things that is striking is the way in which corporate executives and pundits, no matter how much of a failure they might be, just recycle themselves into a new life, without so much as a hint that they failed (I guess the same can be said for coaches and managers of […]

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    Sometimes I read The Wall Street Journal and just laugh…it’s kind of a derisive, you have to be fucking kidding laugh. Many of the reporters do a great job but when you get to the ideologues who write opinion pieces, oh, lordy…to wit: today, Josh Kurtzman has a piece which looks at Mexico’s "job […]

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    One of the things that is amusing to me is the way the mainstream media is perplexed by how Americans think about the economy. Today’s Wall Street Journal gives a classic example: Americans are feeling decidedly sour about the economy and those in charge of it, fueling Democratic efforts to target business interests in […]

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