Joe Firestone: What Social Security/Medicare Solvency Problem?
Joe Firestone reviews the state of play on the Social Security/Medicare “reform” debate.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Yanis Varoufakis: Occupying the Closure of Greek Public TV (Journalists at BBC, ABC, and CBC, Take Note). Updated
For those of us who grew up in the Greece of the neo-fascist colonels, nothing can stir up painful memories like a modern act of totalitarianism. When the television screen froze last night, an hour before midnight, as if some sinister power from beyond had pressed a hideous pause button, I was suddenly transported to the 60s and early 70s when a disruption in television or radio output was a sure sign that another coup d’ etat was in the offing. The only difference was that last night the screen just froze; with journalists still appearing tantalisingly close to finishing their sentence. At least the colonels had the good sense of pasting a picture of the Greek flag, accompanied by military tunes…
Read more...Sasha Breger: More Ways That Financiers Suck Wealth From Agricultural Providers (and Ultimately, You)
By Sasha Breger, a lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of the recent book Derivatives and Development. Her research includes global finance, derivatives, social policy, food, and farming. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
In my last two posts (http://triplecrisis.com/a-great-sucking-sound-part-2/, http://triplecrisis.com/a-great-sucking-sound-part-1/), I addressed the roles of debt, farmland acquisition, and physical commodity hoarding in helping finance siphon wealth from global agriculture. In this final post, I discuss the role of derivatives and insurance markets in this redistributive process.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Class of 2013 – All Dressed Up and No Place to Work
A weak job market, killer student loans and a crappy economy mean continued struggle for America’s college grads.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Half Lives – Why the Part-time Economy Is Bad for Everyone
Why is a whole job getting harder to find every day in America?
Read more...Dave Dayen on Student Loans as Medieval Indentures
Dave Dayen’s latest article at Salon makes a critical point about student debt, that is it fundamentally misleading to call it a loan.
Read more...Bill Black: Great Moments in Nobel Prize History – 2007 Winner Pumps for Plutocracy, Billionaire CEOs
The first article in a series by Black on the remarkable, in the bad sense of the work, work by Nobel prize winners on regulation.
Read more...WSJ Bemoans Rise in Rationality, Um, Decline in Entrepreneurial Risk-Taking
It’s hard to know where to begin with a story up at the Wall Street Journal, Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives
New Gallup polls shows that economic conservatism is down, social liberalism is up.
Read more...Sasha Breger: How Big Finance is Eating the World’s Lunch Agricultural Wealth
If you hear a kind of whooshing, rushing noise, don’t worry—it’s not US jobs moving to China. Today’s great sucking sound is the sound of agricultural wealth being siphoned off into the global financial system.
Read more...Joe Firestone: Sorry Folks, Austerity’s Not Dead Yet!
By Joe Firestone, Ph.D., Managing Director, CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI), and Director of KMCI’s CKIM Certificate program. He has taught political science as the graduate and undergraduate level and blogs regularly at Corrente, Firedoglake and Daily Kos as letsgetitdone. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Read more...More Market State In Action: Consumers Treated Differently Under the Law Than Businesses
You thought corporate personhood was a bad thing? Think twice. You should be so lucky as to be a corporate person. They don’t just get treated like you and me, they are increasingly being treated better than you and me.
Read more...Barbara Parramore Speaks About Her Arrest in “Moral Monday Protests” Against Republican Railroading of Extreme Right-Wing Agenda in North Carolina
Yves here. NC intern Jessica Ferrer interviewed 80 year old Barbara Parramore, who was one of 57 arrested in North Carolina on May 20 as part of what has become weekly protests at the state General Assembly called “Moral Mondays”.
Read more...Nathan Tankus: New York City Public Libraries Attack Alert – Privatizing Prized Locations and Cutting Budget by 35%
By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus
Now that pubic libraries have “done their jobs” (in FIRE sector terms) they can do one more thing for finance and real estate: be killed for private sector fun and profit.
Read more...Is Apple Risking Its Brand Overseas With Its Tax Gimmicks?
For those immune to Apple lust or otherwise unwilling to cut the Cupertino giant slack just because it has sleek products and cool stores, a new article by tax maven Lee Sheppard at Forbes gives a layperson-friendly overview of how Apple managed to keep $44 billion of revenues out of the hands of the tax men.
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