Obama's Failure to Hold Banks Accountable for Fraud

Obama's Failure to Punish Banks Should Be Causing Serious Social Unrest | Alternet
A new PBS Frontline report examines outrageous steps Obama's administration took to protect Wall St. Wall Street from prosecutions.

The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-changer?

The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-changer? | Alternet
by Ellen Brown
The coin actually represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free.

Everything You Know About The Deficit Is Wrong: Fixing It Is Painless - Business Insider

Everything You Know About The Deficit Is Wrong: Fixing It Is Painless - Business Insider

Big Finance's Pathology Compels the Logic of Socialized Banking

Big Finance's Pathology Compels the Logic of Socialized Banking | Common Dreams

10 Things Republicans Don't Want You to Know About the "Fiscal Cliff"

10 Things Republicans Don't Want You to Know About the "Fiscal Cliff" | Alternet

Rethinking Money

Jacqui Dunne: Rethinking Money

Opinions abound as to why Switzerland enjoys such apparent economic strength. Many suppose that it's because the country was neutral in the Second World War and didn't have to suffer the economic and social consequences. Or whimsically, that it has something to do with some magical ingredient in their Alpine drinking water.
The truth of the situation is far more compelling. A major contributor to Switzerland's buoyancy is a business-to-business currency and the banking institution behind it. The story of this success has its initiation during the bleak days of the Depression.

A Fuller Accounting for Goverment?

Debra K. Decker: A Fuller Accounting
Discussions about the economy and the fiscal cliff may be urgent but they are not the most important discussions we need to be having. We keep getting twisted and tied up by urgent matters because we don't address America's important underlying issues: what we want as a people and the role of government in helping us achieve that. These important issues are difficult ones to address -- made only more difficult by the lack of a framework for discussing them. To develop a framework, we need a fuller accounting.

Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat

Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat
There’s one tie that binds Lucas Papademos in Greece, Henry Paulsen in the United States, and Mark Carney in the U.K., and that’s Goldman Sachs. All were former bankers and executives at the Wall Street giant, all assumed prominent positions of power, and all played a hand after the global financial meltdown of 2007-08, thus making sure Goldman Sachs weathered the storm and made significant profits in the process.

But that's just scratching the surface.  As Europe descends into an austerity-induced economic crisis, Goldman Sachs's people are managing the demise of the continent. As the British newspaper The Independent reported earlier this year, the Conservative technocrats currently steering or who have steered post-crash fiscal policy in Greece, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, and now the UK, all hail from Goldman Sachs. In fact, the head of the European Central Bank itself, Mario Draghi, was the former managing director of Goldman Sachs International.

Robert Kuttner: The Fiscal Myth

Robert Kuttner: The Fiscal Myth
As President Obama gets closer to making his deal with the Republicans on the budget, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the fiscal cliff is an artificially contrived trap. Were it not for the two Bush wars and the two Bush tax cuts and the House Republican games of brinksmanship with the routine extension of the debt ceiling, there would be no "fiscal cliff."

Higher tuitions: Harbinger of a Hybrid University? | UT Watch on the Web

Higher tuitions: Harbinger of a Hybrid University? | UT Watch on the Web

Cities in the Red: Austerity Hits America

Cities in the Red: Austerity Hits America | Dissent Magazine

The European debt crisis, and the ensuing austerity-fueled chaos, can seem to Americans like a distant battle that portends a dark future. Yet a closer look reveals that the future is already here. American austerity has largely taken the form of municipal budget crises precipitated by predatory Wall Street lending practices. The debt financing of U.S. cities and towns, a neoliberal economic model that long precedes the current recession, has inflicted deep and growing suffering on communities across the country.

Anarchism and Russian vs. American collapse

Is Anarchism an Idea Whose Time Has Come? | Alternet
  October 13, 2012 

Anarchist thinking appears to be gaining relevance and acceptance among a larger audience.

 

It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now  Dmitry Orlov  joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism.

John R. Talbott: The Ethical Investor: Wall Street Ripoff #5 - Convincing You That Money Markets Are the Same As Cash

John R. Talbott: The Ethical Investor: Wall Street Ripoff #5 - Convincing You That Money Markets Are the Same As Cash

How the U.S. Spends $2.16 Trillion on Violence Annually

Rep. Mike Honda: Shocker: America Spends $2.16 Trillion on Violence Annually
From the Wisconsin shooting to the war in Afghanistan, we all know that violence costs our society, whether it's domestic violence, a homicide, a war, or something as simple as a security system. We also know that there are direct and indirect costs associated with violence, whether it's the immediate medical, court and police costs that stem from violent crime, or the long-term loss of economic productivity that stems from the loss of an American worker's life.
What we don't know, however, is how much that violence costs our society -- in total. A new report out this week, by the Institute for Economics and Peace, shows just how much, and it is an overwhelming amount.

Perspective on the latest QE3 from the Fed

The Circulating Money Supply: Why QE3 Won’t Jumpstart the Economy—and What Would | Global Research
The economy could use a good dose of “aggregate demand”—new spending money in the pockets of consumers—but QE3 won’t do it.  Neither will it trigger the dreaded hyperinflation.  In fact, it won’t do much at all.  There are better alternatives.    

Romney's Greatest Deception on Taxation

Romney's Greatest Deception

While observers have rightly pointed out that most Americans work hard and take responsibility for their circumstances, less attention has been devoted to the deceptive premise behind Romney's remarks, namely that government redistributes wealth downward from the rich to the poor. In fact, our taxation system funnels money from the bottom up to the top.

Occupy 2.0: Strike Debt

Occupy 2.0: Strike Debt | The Nation
“Debt is the tie that binds the 99 percent,” Occupy organizer Yates McKee has written: from the underwater and foreclosed-upon homeowners who were first pummeled by the economic crisis, to the millions of debt-strapped students who are in default or on the brink, to all those driven into bankruptcy by medical bills, to workers everywhere who have been forced to compensate for more than thirty years of stagnating wages with credit card debt, to the firefighters and teachers who have had to accept pay cuts because their cities are broke, to the citizens of countries where schools and hospitals are being closed to pay back foreign bondholders. Given the way debt operates at the municipal and national levels, the issue affects us all—even those who are fortunate enough to be debt-free, as well as those so poor they don’t have access to credit. Debt is one of the ways we all feel Wall Street’s influence most intimately, whether it’s because of a ballooning mortgage payment or a subway fare hike or a shuttered clinic.

The Lost Decade of the Middle Class

The Lost Decade of the Middle Class | Pew Social & Demographic Trends
As the 2012 presidential candidates prepare their closing arguments to America’s middle class, they are courting a group that has endured a lost decade for economic well-being. Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith in the future.

A Few Easy Ways to take care of the National Debt

4 Easy Ways We Can Tax the Rich to Fill Government Coffers | Alternet

Republican Policy's Role in the National Debt

Republican National Convention: The one graph you need to see before watching
... the idea is to blame President Obama and the Democrats for the national debt.
But in doing so, the Republicans will end up blaming Obama for the policies they pushed in the Bush years, and the recession that began on a Republican president’s watch, and a continuation of tax cuts that they supported. They’ll have to. Because if they took all that off the debt clock, there wouldn’t be much debt there to blame him for at all.