Working Life

Every single day that I campaign, someone comes up to me in the streets and says, "can you get me a job?". On one day this past weekend, I got literally a couple of dozen of those questions. The desperation in peoples’ voices is more urgent than I have heard in a long, long time […]

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   Well, it’s nice to know that even the Federal Reserve can hear: The Federal Reserve will meet on Tuesday faced with a pivotal decision about whether to abandon its presumption that the economy is gradually picking up steam and begin to consider new steps to keep the recovery from sputtering out.    That easily […]

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Count me in the group, perhaps small, that is unimpressed with the pledge by a group of billionaires to give away large parts of their fortune. Not because I oppose the idea of philanthropy. Rather, the announcement obscures a reality: very little of the money will go to challenging the root causes of the incredible […]

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   This is the news today: U.S. consumer spending was flat in June as incomes stopped growing and prices remained subdued, pointing to a weaker economy.    But, that should not be a surprise. Which makes this very curious:    Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said rising wages would probably spur household spending in […]

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As the dust has settled a bit from last week’s slap-on-the-wrist to Goldman Sachs, it’s worth making this point again: nothing much has changed.   After the first few hours of the news that Goldman would pay $550 million to make the SEC go away, it became pretty clear that the government had nicked Goldman […]

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  If I was Lloyd Blankfein and you told me that I could pockets hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, play a key role in a scam that cost millions of people their jobs, sent the economy into one of the worst economic tailspins in a half century, escape any personal jail time for […]

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   As if smoking wasn’t bad enough for the health of its users:  Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and forced labor is widespread on farms that supply a cigarette factory owned by Philip Morris International in […]

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   Okay, something to like on a 102-degree day: The Obama administration on Tuesday sued Arizona over the state’s strict new immigration law, attempting to wrestle back control over the issue but infuriating Republicans who said the border required more security. The administration argued the Arizona law, which requires state and local police to investigate […]

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    If it wasn’t so tragic, I’d be laughing until my belly hurt at the hand-wringing about the shaky nature of the economy. I’ve been saying this for many months, particularly every time I’ve seen the foolish predictions of the recovery around the corner. So, now, the stock market has a deep drop and people […]

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   Nothing changes: As the House and Senate move to finalize regulatory-overhaul legislation, the Federal Reserve has emerged as likely to retain most of the power and independence Fed officials have feared they might lose.  

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