Working Life

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 […]

Read the full story

    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 […]

Read the full story

    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 […]

Read the full story

    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 […]

Read the full story

    Yesterday, the House passed a bill called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. You may remember Ledbetter was the victim of an idiotic Supreme Court decision that denied her claim of discrimination because the Court said she had waited too long to file the claim. That outrageous decision would be overturned by law if […]

Read the full story

    This is potentially a big story–and an important one. For many years, cities and states have been caught in effectively a blackmail situation–companies threaten to leave or not relocate their businesses unless the municipalities hand over a whole host of tax breaks and incentives. In return for these gifts, companies promise that all sorts […]

Read the full story

Can we get some New York senators who aren’t totally beholden to the Wall Street bankers? I mean, geez…A piece today in The New York Times explores why Chuck Schumer is running interference for the private equity fund and hedge fund managers who are trying to block a bill that would hike their taxes. June […]

Read the full story

Before I cite a few reports on yesterday’s collapse in markets around the world, let me pause for these two observations: 1. This was all predictable. My colleague Dean Baker warned of the housing bubble as far back as 2002. And you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist, or even an economist, to feel […]

Read the full story

    This is so typical that it’s hardly surprising–From UPI: Iraq’s oil minister said Iraq’s oil unions are not legitimate and have no more standing in the debate over the oil law than an ordinary citizen. “There are no legal unions in Iraq,” Hussein al-Shahristani said Wednesday in response to a question about various factions’ […]

Read the full story

Even for me, $58 billion sounds like a lot of money…that’s apparently the shortfall in the New Jersey state pension funds, which the state plans on confirming tomorrow. Mary Williams Walsh in The New York Times reports today that: It turns out that New Jersey will need about $58 billion, in today’s dollars, to provide […]

Read the full story