Working Life

They robbed Americans of their future. They cost perhaps a generation of hard-working people a decent pay check. And they left millions of people with empty 401(k)s, with some seniors being booted from their retirement homes because there was no money left. And, yet, they still don’t get it–or maybe they truly don’t care.   […]

Read the full story

   Let’s review a couple of facts. Over the past 30 years, even though productivity has been skyrocketing, wages have been essentially flat for workers. And we are now living through a period where at least one in five Americans does not have full-time work with decent wages.    But, at least some people are […]

Read the full story

   The president is going to announce today a tax on the big banks and financial institutions: The tax on banks, insurance companies and brokerages with more than $50 billion in assets would start after June 30 and seek to collect $90 billion over 10 years, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters […]

Read the full story

   It’s a strange coincidence but there is a direct connection between the earthquake in Haiti and the spectacle of the financial elite testifying  before the Commission-that-will-do-nothing about the mess they made.    How did we get to where we are? We have lived in a system that allowed a tiny elite to rob the […]

Read the full story

   Bankers are nervous about the bonuses they are about to get: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other big banks are bracing for a renewed public and political backlash against their compensation plans as they prepare to unveil multi-billion dollar bonus packages. Under pressure from government, banks are already saying they will devote the […]

Read the full story

   A quick post today on the run…someone is going to have a nice holiday haul thanks to you (from The Wall Street Journal): American International Group Inc. is preparing to pay its outgoing general counsel Anastasia Kelly several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, according to people familiar with […]

Read the full story

One of the biggest challenges that we face as a country is not that we lack money or wealth–we have plenty of money. Rather, we have a distorted set of priorities and an ideological frame that walls off many possibilities to create a decent society. For example: the belief in the so-called "free market" that […]

Read the full story

   The French should be thrilled that the Republicans do not control the Congress because we would certainly see another landmark "Freedom Fries" bill become law after this: French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Wednesday that France will slap a one-off 50% tax on bonuses awarded to bank employees next year. "Banks will be taxed […]

Read the full story

   To understand how out of touch some of the people at the helm of large businesses are, consider the following contrast today. First, the nation’s ranks of unemployed–which have been swelled by the irresponsible behavior of, if I may quote the president, "fat-cat bankers"–are in dire straights: More than half of the nation’s unemployed […]

Read the full story

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 […]

Read the full story