Working Life

   I really think the people who talk about "recovery" live in a world not inhabited by most Americans: The economic recovery that started in mid-2009 is losing steam. The manufacturing sector, once the driver of the recovery, stumbled in May as companies cut back on production and hiring. A persistent slowdown in hiring is […]

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   Look, it isn’t surprising. The entire financial community wants nothing to do with stronger oversight–even though stronger oversight would help prevent another meltdown, though, if you are a CEO of a bank or a big financial institution, the lesson you’ve learned from the last go-around is that you won’t suffer personally…    So, they’ll […]

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    A thought crossed my mind reading today’s Wall Street Journal, and I offer this thought to the vice-president: if you have the choice of continuing the entirely pointless exercise of fanning the flames of the phony debt and deficit "crisis" VERSUS fulfilling the more traditional daily role of vice presidents who are sent to […]

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   It’s one thing for progressive economists and activists to see the emptiness and complete foolishness of Tim Pawlenty’s "economic plan". It’s another thing for perhaps the globe’s leading financial newspaper to dismiss it as something that is "difficult to describe without seeming to parody it." But, The Financial Times Clive Crook makes a valiant […]

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    It is a sad story to read, and a sad but powerful comment on who runs America. Rather than come to dinner with subpoenas and maybe even a few warrants for the arrest of the people who helped engineer the economic crisis we are still digging out of, the president is groveling–for campaign cash […]

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   Yesterday, I wrote about an appalling but typical example of how bi-partisan "debate" is really an argument taking place on one side, in this case King Cuomo’s immoral decision to attack workers’ pensions by regurgitating Republican talking points that the economic crisis we face is the fault of the middle-class, workers, unions, and a […]

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    Meanwhile, as we are subjected to the foolish efforts by Democrats to cut pensions for workers, over in Geneva there is some serious talk about the social crisis underway worldwide. Via the meeting of the International Labor Organization, thousands of people from around the world are talking about the grand crisis ripping throughout the […]

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   It really is no surprise, unfortunately, that the country is spinning out of control, the middle-class is dying and we are trapped in some of the dumbest debates imaginable–chief among them the entirely phony argument over a non-existent debt and deficit "crisis". Not surprising because many of these debates have political leaders essentially taking […]

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   The assault against even the most modest attempt to take the boot off the neck of the American consumer continues. Wall Street leaders like Jamie Dimon whine about regulation. And the banks are hoping to keep their hands in the pockets of consumers–and they have willing hands in the U.S. Senate. The Senate just […]

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   I mean, this is pretty funny–except it’s pathetic, bizarre and, ultimately, gives all of us a great window on the "they haven’t learned anything" culture on Wall Street and the business world in general. Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan (and the Ten of Hearts in the 52 deck-of cards Audacity of Greed), is […]

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