Working Life

The most important political figure in your economic life—to be sure, the boss of a company has got a lot of power—is not the president of the United States, no matter who that is. It’s probably the head of the Federal Reserve Board. We know interest rates are at historic lows and mortgage rates are […]

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It’s easy to get dragged into a negative head space if you do any kind of politics or movement building work—it’s hard out there and too often we have a tendency to focus on the really bad stuff, like “the planet is burning up and imploding” or a few people own more wealth in the […]

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It’s just basically a good thing when good, new, progressive people run in primaries against incumbents. Even if that incumbent isn’t a horrible human being and has a decent voting record—compared of course to the rest of the politicians out there. Today we get to hear from a darn good candidate, Albert Lee, who’s taking […]

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It’s an action-packed, let’s-catch-the-thieves-in-the-act episode. The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee just wrapped up its two-day secret June meeting without triggering a new cut in interests rates—and what does that mean? I unravel the state of play at the Fed—and ask the question why shouldn’t we change the basic structure of the Fed—with Dean […]

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You may remember that last month I did a curtain-raiser on the Jet Blue flight attendants’ union organizing campaign vote (Episode 74). Yesterday, the vote came in—and the workers crushed it, winning by a 2-1 margin. You get to hear first-hand from three front-line flight attendant activists how it all came down. I also talk […]

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Poof! Before you noticed it, the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates and, then, no one much talked about it, even though the Fed probably has more power over your job prospects than any politician. So, we talk about The Fed at length with long-time Fed watcher Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic […]

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Fuck those idiots at the Fed. Tools of Wall Street, the bond market and the rest of the pieces of crap that have savaged Americans. You hike interests rates for no economic reason other than some clamor from the very elites who just need to soak regular Americans even more. Bernie (from his Senate website […]

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Banks on the brink. Financial system close to collapse–or so said the experts. To the rescue rode the Federal Reserve Board, which authorized trillions of dollars for all sorts of financial institutions, domestic and foreign…even if said institutions didn’t need the money but were happy to take essentially free money.

That was back during the financial crisis.

Now, it’s Greece and its banks running short on cash, squeezed by the money lenders and, in particular, the European Central Bank. So, why not: the Federal Reserve Board should be directed by Congress to commit to providing liquidity to Greek banks so the people in Greece–millions of human beings–can pay their bills, get their pension payments and continue to have money to buy food–or cut off the ECB from its Fed-backed line of credit.

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Putting aside the noise that rumbles from the Boehner-McConnell-Fill-In-The-Blank Republican divorced-from-reality view of the economy, who rail about job-killing taxes/regulation/voodoo, the far bigger threat to jobs right now hails from the halls of the Federal Reserve Board. It could, within weeks or months, guarantee that hundreds of thousands of people won’t have a job, and reawaken the deficit-mongering crowd’s call for cuts in government that will hurt millions more.

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Well, duh…

It’s good to see this demand by both Elizabeth Warren and Joe Manchin. But, there’s an important point missing.

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