I came up with this around ten years ago to put a point on the logical trap Social Security privatizers (often unwittingly) find themselves in. It goes like this: If Privatization is Necessary, it Won’t be Possible If Privatization is Possible, it Won’t be Necessary To understand the trap we need to do some parsing […]
The post-New Deal Republican party has delivered endless strings of deficits and debt. That is their historic legacy to America, the bare fact on the ground that unfortunately requires endless repetition to impart the reality, and counter the tea-party fantasy of fiscally irresponsible Democrats.Also required is a catchy moniker that encapsulates that reality: Red-Ink Republicans […]
Andrew Sullivan reviews the book Red Ink. Here are some shocking facts that I learned from “Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget. Where the Trillions Come From, Where They Go, and Why Inaction Imperils Our Future.” An amazing 64 percent of the 4.4 million employees on the federal payroll are either […]
From Robert Reich on Sandy Weill: If any single person is responsible for Wall Street banks becoming too big to fail it’s Sandy Weill. In 1998 he created the financial powerhouse Citigroup by combining Traveler’s Insurance and Citibank. To cash in on the combination, Weill then successfully lobbied the Clinton administration to repeal the Glass-Steagall […]
Posts have been a bit thin lately and will be from me a few days more. I have run into being busy in a major way and am too tired to be conscientious, even though there is a lot going on. I hope to be back to a more regular schedule next week…even vacation posting […]
Update: *Additional numbers added Digby wrote a few days ago about the“grown-up” people coming to town to save America from the deficit. She listed a few of those people and their annual income. Also, a few days ago the Senate had a vote on the tax cuts. Letting the Bush cuts go (I’m […]
by Kenneth Thomas New Estimate of Offshore Wealth Shows Big Increase Since 2004 A new report by the Tax Justice Network, “The Price of Offshore Revisited,” shows that the amount of wealth held in tax havens has increased enormously since 2004, and confirms what I previously wrote about the huge cost to tax coffers of […]
Spencer England writes: This article is worth reading – it is at two sources: Energy Bulletin and Financial Times…is peak oil dead? The marginal price of new oil is now in the $70 to $90 — where WTI has bottomed at its last three corrections. If we are at a bottom for the real price of oil and the […]
by Rebecca Wilder Euro Area Crisis Hits Confidence in the Core France’s INSEE business confidence, Germany’s Ifo business climate, and theNational Bank of Belgium’s business survey demonstrate ongoing infection as the Euro area debt crisis hits business expectations in the core. Through July, business confidence in Germany and France continued to slide while that in […]