$21 Trillion Hiding In Tax Shelters

6 Things You Should Know About the $21 Trillion the World's Richest People Are Hiding In Tax Shelters | Alternet
While governments slash spending and lay off workers, citing a need for “austerity” because of the slow economy, the ultra-rich—fewer than 10 million people—have stashed an amount equal to the US and Japanese economies combined away from the tax man. This is according to a new report by the Tax Justice Network , and their findings are shocking. The lost tax revenue from offshore tax shelters, they note, “is large enough to make a significant difference to all of our conventional measures of inequality. Since most of the missing financial wealth belongs to a tiny elite, the impact is staggering.” 

Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps | Visions | AlterNet

Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps | Visions | AlterNet
What happens when a mature industrial nation turns its back on democracy and lets its right-wing elite destroy the middle class? We've seen this movie before.

Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps | Visions | AlterNet

Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps | Visions | AlterNet

How Wall Street Hustles America's Cities and States Out of Billions | Economy | AlterNet

How Wall Street Hustles America's Cities and States Out of Billions | Economy | AlterNet

Many powerful interests have jumped at the opportunity to use the crisis to eviscerate what’s left of the welfare state.

Robert Kuttner: Fiscal Futility

Robert Kuttner: Fiscal Futility
On Tuesday, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation will hold its third annual fiscal summit. We need this event like we need a mass outbreak of sado-masochism.
If you wonder why all right-thinking people seem to have concluded that austerity is the royal road to economic recovery from a severe financial collapse made on Wall Street, look no further than the Peterson Foundation.

Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy -- And Where We're Headed Now | Visions | AlterNet

Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy -- And Where We're Headed Now | Visions | AlterNet
In a don't-miss article in this month’s Vanity Fair, Stiglitz argues that our current economic woes are the result of a deep structural shift in the economy — a once-in-a-lifetime phase change that happens whenever the foundations of an old economic order are disrupted, and a new basis of wealth creation comes forward to take its place. The last time this happened was in the 1920s and 1930s, when a US economy that was built on farm output became the victim of its own success. Advances in farming led to a food glut. As food prices plummeted, farmers had less money to spend. This, in turn, depressed manufacturing and led to job losses in the cities, too. Land values in both places declined, impoverishing families and trapping them in place.

Is the Eurozone About to Collapse--and How Will it Impact the US? | | AlterNet

Is the Eurozone About to Collapse--and How Will it Impact the US? | | AlterNet
The third lesson is that austerity is counterproductive, and that “expansionary austerity” is exactly what it would seem—a dangerous oxymoron [see Ari Berman, “The Austerity Class,” November 7]. Germany’s view is that the crisis was caused by excessive government debt, built up over the past decade or two, and that market “confidence” and economic growth can be restored only through fiscal consolidation involving steep spending cuts and tax increases. But as common sense would have suggested, imposing austerity measures has killed off growth in much of the peripheral economies while pushing the eurozone economy as a whole closer to recession.