Supposedly inspired by the Arab spring, a protest movement has swept Manhattan’s Financial District in recent days in an attempt to “Occupy Wall Street.” Although the protesters don’t appear to have specific plans or demands, they are outraged by what they perceive as greed in the financial industry and economic inequality throughout the United States. In her treatise of the 1960s student uprising at the | Read More »
In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, Congress enacted an almost $800 billion stimulus bill in the assumption that an artificial increase in consumer demand could propel the nation into recovery. The rationale was pure Keynesian economics—in times of crisis, the government should borrow, spend and boost demand to generate growth. Two years later, it’s clear that the stimulus didn’t work. Unemployment is still | Read More »
There’s a proposal out there to split the state of California in half. The fifty-first state would be named South California and encompass the city of San Diego and conservative countries whereas Los Angeles, San Francisco and the more liberal northern parts of the state would continue to be governed from Sacramento. The proposed fifty-first state would be the fifth largest by population in the | Read More »
Writing for The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne argues that the debate about government spending in America is distracting people from the question how public and private resources can best be brought to bear in an effort to enhance the nation’s competitiveness. Other countries, he believes, are way ahead of the curve. While the United States is not even sure we should have gone halfway toward | Read More »
“I’m rooting for everybody to get rich,” President Barack Obama said last week, speaking at a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada. “But I believe that we can’t ask everybody to sacrifice and then tell the wealthiest among us, well, you can just relax and go count your money, and don’t worry about it. We’re not going to ask anything of you.” The president urged | Read More »
The United States, like most nations in the developed world, maintain a progressive federal income tax system, meaning people not only pay a given percentage of their income in taxes but that percentage increases for high income earners, from 10 percent for individuals making a little more than $8,000 a year to 35 percent on incomes over $370,000. As a result, in 2008, the top | Read More »
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned in the Financial Times of the hugely market distorting effects of the Dodd-Frank financial bill this week. A day later, the chairman of the Congressional Budget Office testified before the House financial oversight committee about the fiscal impact of the reform act that was hammered out by lawmakers this summer. Dodd-Frank, for starters, creates many new federal bureaucracies, | Read More »
The brothers Charles and David Koch, owners of energy conglomerate Koch Industries, have come under assault from the left in recent days for supposedly playing a shadowy role in the budget battle that is wrecking havoc in the state of Wisconsin. The Republican governor of Wisconsin has taken on public sector unions in his state, seeking to deprive them, in part, of their collective bargaining | Read More »
From the diaries by Leon… Defending his administration’s push to enhance regulation of private enterprise, President Barack Obama told a Chamber of Commerce audience on Monday that companies have a responsibility to ensure that everyone profits from their expansion. If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. | Read More »
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) that was established in the spring of 2009 to explore the causes of the previous year’s financial meltdown, released its findings today. What was to blame for the crisis, they say? Widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve’s failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages; Dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}