Working Life

A note to the British: you should thank your lucky stars that the Republicans are not running the Congress because fish and chips would now be renamed Freemarket Delight to protest your government’s decision to levy a tax on bankers’ bonuses. Seriously, here is one small step forward to a rationale response to the obscene […]

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   Yes, we have to rethink how the financial system is set up. Most of the thinking is along these lines: Democrats are advancing proposals in Congress designed to limit the size and complexity of financial companies so that any collapse wouldn’t damage the broader economy, a sign that lawmakers are responding to anti-Wall Street […]

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   I will continue to post and argue, until proven otherwise, that there is no recovery–that it is a myth. I am an optimist by nature but I also believe in dealing with actual reality (I know, that is so 1960s). Here is why I love Paul Krugman: But there’s an even bigger problem: while […]

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There is no recovery for Main Street, no matter how many people are on their knees looking for "green shoots". It is phony rhetoric–and even the left-wing Financial Times grasps the problem.   The paper’s front-page article today is headlined "Goldman and Citi highlight divide", with the article’s subhead reading, "Wall Street recovering faster than […]

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   Turns out that not only have you, the taxpayer, bailed out the "too big too fail" (TBTF) banks but you’ve likely given them a break over smaller banks. So, say the always-accurate folks at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in a new study: In effect, because of the government safety net being […]

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   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 […]

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  I understand why the Administration had been working overtime to try to prop up major banks–but understanding does not mean agreement with the long-term strategy. In fact, the question worth asking today is not whether the stress tests are accurate or whether more taxpayer money will be needed to shore up the major banks. […]

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   There is an illuminating–and admirable piece in The New York Times that has an unsettling vibe of the past: how financial manipulators are already circling to try to profit from the distress of the economic calamity that many of them actually helped create…and maybe even set the stage for the great next crisis down […]

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   People behave badly. Well, duh. I tend to be a forgiving sort in most individual cases. But, it’s the people who behave badly who hurt lots of people who can’t be allowed to just quietly slip into the night. I’m reminded of that because of two things I read, one yesterday and the other […]

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   Maybe I’m eating too much Matzoh which is clogging the part of my brain that triggers the "trust" center but I’m not feeling great about this aspect of the government’s effort to conduct "stress tests" on the banks: But the tests, which are expected to be completed by the end of this month, are […]

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