Working Life

   Paul Krugman makes a point today in his column that I, and others, have made before: Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Mr. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to […]

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   Yes, as the president said, the bonuses taken by Wall Street bankers are shameful. But, there is an even larger shame happening in the country: the plundering of America by the richest Americans and our unwillingness to call for significantly higher taxes on the elite.   Buried in the business section of The New […]

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   Yours truly is on a plane soon for the rest of the day, more or less. But, here’s a quick little something to make your heart grow fonder for those incomptent, greedy people who helped crater the financial system: By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that […]

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  It’s often said we live in a global economy. Yet, we tend to spend most of our time thinking only about how the economic financial crisis has sent a sea of Americans to the jobless line. The global picture, however, is even more catastrophic: 50 million additional people may find themselves jobless by the […]

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   If anyone–like obstructionist Republicans–had any doubt that we have no time to waste on the stimulus, we are peering over the edge of the abyss: Furloughs, wage reductions, hiring freezes and shorter hours simply did not do enough. A year into this recession, companies across the board are resorting to mass job cuts. Home […]

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   There is a truly incredible chart this morning in the Financial Times headlined "The rapidly shrinking banking industry". When you look at the chart you understand: the banking sector will either implode dramatically, even further than before, or we will nationalize large chunks of the banking sector. And, unless ths Administration and Congress significantly […]

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   While I can’t claim this is fact, I would bet it’s hard to find a presidential inauguration day probably since the Great Depression–and maybe not even then–when the Dow dropped so steeply–and, in fact, as I just glanced back at The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper says that the 332-point drop yesterday was the […]

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   Yours truly will be headed today early down to D.C.–I hear something is happening there, what it is isn’t exactly clear, there’s a man…well, you get the pic…    But, yesterday, there was this to ponder: Congress approved the $700 billion rescue plan with the idea that banks would help struggling borrowers and increase […]

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The traditional press has ample capacity to obsess about stupid things but very little capacity to dig deep (yes, I know, I’m stating the obvious). Today’s example: Timothy Geithner. Yes, the guy messed up and, I’m going to take his word for it, forgot to pay some social security taxes. But, the real question is: […]

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   Ah, yes, another chapter in the saga of the great financial guru, Robert Rubin–you know, the guy who the entire political and media establishment fawned over for almost two decades as the all-knowing, all-seeing, wise man of the global financial world…until, of course, the entire financial house of cards collapsed in large part because […]

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