The problem with economics is not that it's too complicated; the problem is that it's too damn simple. This problem is amply demonstrated by all the heroic efforts made by economists to explain the weakness of the current recovery.
We've had economists tell us that the problem is that we are now a service sector economy rather than a manufacturing economy. The story is that inventory fluctuations explain much of the cycle. Since we don't inventory services, we will have a slower bounceback in terms of production and employment. (There is a simple problem, since we don't inventory services, the downturn should also be less severe in a service dominated economy. How does this story fit with the worst downturn s
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News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed - and a common need for unionized resistance.
"It was like a nuclear bomb went off," said the mayor as a mushroom cloud soared above his tiny Texas town. The explosion "ripped through three feet of concre
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One year after the infamous Jamie Dimon "tempest in a teapot" fiasco, which promptly turned out to be the biggest TBTF prop-trading desk debacle in history, things were going well for JPMorgan.
On one hand, the chairman of the TBAC (and thus US Treasury advisor and policy administrator), and former LTCM trader, Matt Zames, was just recently promoted to the sole second in command post at the biggest US bank (and 2nd biggest in the world) by assets, and first in line to take over from Jamie Dimon. On the other hand, one of Mary Jo White's former co-workers, and a JPM defense attorney from Debevoise just became h
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Minds are changing on Too Big to Fail. A month ago, it was just something in the air. Now, it looks like we're headed for a real legislative confrontation. And man, is the finance sector freaking.
Last week, on April 24th, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louisiana Republican David Vitter introduced legislation called the "Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013 Act," or the "Brown-Vitter TBTF Act" for sh
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Published on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 by Common Dreams
'The Gilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See
Aggressive lobbying effort fights disclosure of just how big the income disparities are
-Jon Queally, staff writer
If there's one thing about what many are calling the "The New Gilded Age," it's that well-known corporations—not to mention less well-known, but extremely powerful ones—will fight extremely hard to keep secret just how lopsided the economic disparities have become in recent decades between low-paid workers in the society and the executive and ruling class that have reaped the words of a global
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When I traveled to the desert city of Victorville in Souther California this January, I little expected that the neighboring town of Adelanto would become ground zero for a fight between billionaires on one side, and poor, vulnerable minority parents and children on the other.
I first heard about the fight through the local right-wing paper, the Victorville Daily Press, which gleefully announced on its front page that a local school, Desert Trails Elementary, had just made history as the first school in the nation to be privatized under California's new "parent trigger" law. The paper described the takeover as "promising a fresh start to the failing elementary school,” and claimed it had
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We used to be a country with a rich heart. Now we’re the land of the heartless rich.
In one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, the billionaire Koch brothers who habitually rail against government’s unfair burden on the wealthy, have almost doubled their net worth to a combined $64 billion. On March 10, 2010, Forbes listed the net worth of Charles and David Koch at $17.5 billion each. This year, Forbes says the Koch brothers are individually worth $34 billion.
During that same time period, some of the bleakest economic news has been reported for the rest of America. Just yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that between 2009 to 2011 the richest 7 percent of Americans increased their wealth by 28 pe
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The problem with economics is not that it's too complicated; the problem is that it's too damn simple. This problem is amply demonstrated by all the heroic efforts made by economists to explain the weakness of the current recovery.
One year after the infamous Jamie Dimon "tempest in a teapot" fiasco, which promptly turned out to be the biggest TBTF prop-trading desk debacle in history, things were going well for JPMorgan. 
By Michael, on May 1st, 2013 
Minds are changing on Too Big to Fail. A month ago, it was just 
When I traveled to the desert city of Victorville in Souther California this January, I little expected that the neighboring town of Adelanto would become ground zero for a fight between billionaires on one side, and poor, vulnerable minority parents and children on the other.
