Working Life

A lot of people are squirming and screeching, demanding that Congress take action. Do something about that damn “fiscal cliff” — a phony elite construction by the way. My view is: don’t do anything and the country will be better off.

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   I have a piece in Tuesday’s The Australian (if you are in the U.S. and you catch this on Monday, hey, it’s the time machine effect), basically, arguing that the 2012 presidential elections won’t change a whole lot.     See it here.     Or read it after the fold:

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   People sometimes repeat certain phrases because they’ve heard them used repeatedly when they actually want to say something else, even if they aren’t conscious. Or, put another way–if you want to know why Democrats lost the special election in New York, I’d argue it has a lot to do with the Obama Administration’s failure […]

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   Ask yourself this basic question: what would you say about the bombing of Libya if it had been ordered by George W. Bush or some other Republican? If your answer is that you would have the same position, ok–but there is a legitimate question to be asked here, as some members of Congress are […]

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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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   If Democrats wonder why more than half the people in the country think that the party of FDR cares more about the concerns of big corporations, no need to look any further than this: House leaders cut the cost of the package by roughly $44 billion, in part to address complaints from Blue Dog […]

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 My refrain, whenever I hear about the "deficits", is very simple: we have plenty of money. We are the richest nation in human history. The problem is our priorities. And this week it boils down to this: do we want war or do we want teachers who will make our kids ready for the future? […]

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   In the dysfunctional world of politics, games are played that no normal person would think makes sense. Right now, one of those games is being played out in astonishing fashion: Congress is being told that if it wants money for teachers, Haiti reconstruction and other good social needs, it has to vote for billions […]

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   This past Friday, I wrote that the financial powers were winning the debate on Capitol Hill. Today, another victory for those powers: The Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to require a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency actions during and after the 2008 financial crisis as part of broad legislation overhauling the nation’s […]

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   The forces trying to instill some rollback of the power of the financial elites suffered two defeats yesterday. First, Bernie Sanders’ amendment to bring more scrutiny to the Fed was watered down. Where did the pressure come from to let the Fed continue to operate in the same way it did before the crisis–a […]

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