NewsTrust - Finance - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Op-Ed Columnist: The Phantom Menace

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - The scare stories from Wall Street seem to be intimidating Washington from doing more to rescue the economy.

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An American Catastrophe

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Bob Herbert - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Detroit and its environs are suffering the agonies of the economic damned because of policies, crafted at the highest national and corporate levels, that resulted in the implosion of crucially important components of America’s manufacturing base. Those decisions have had a profound effect on the fortunes not just of Detroit, or even Michigan, but the entire U.S. economy.

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Geithner Says Insurance Policies, Not AIG Derivatives Contracts, Were Systemic Risk

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Geithner says credit-default swaps weren't the problem, after all.

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Want to Save Our Economy from Almighty Greed? Here Are 10 Crucial Fights and Key Fighters to Watch

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Zach Carter - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - There are no less than four federal regulators responsible for overseeing consumer protection in finance, and all of them are terrible.

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Too Big to Fail - Too Big to Exist -

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

senate.gov - By Senator Bernie Sanders - Nov. 06 (Statement) - Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would break up financial institutions that are too big to fail. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said. "We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy. We should end the concentration of ownership that has resulted in just four huge financial institutions holding half the mortgages in America, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits."

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Our Free Market Makes Economic Collapse Inevitable

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers, James Galbraith - Nov. 02 (Interview) - The headlines are trumpeting recovery — some are even proclaiming an end to the recession in the United States (unofficially, that is). The US economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year. But there are some caveats — although jobless claims dipped slightly, many analysts still warn of a "jobless recovery." for a number of years to come. And then there's the small print — will this recovery be permanent or is it a function of the stimulus masking bigger problems? The Wall Street Journal warned: "The recovery thus far has been heavily supported by federal money, casting a question mark over the economy's underlying strength as government support dwindles." That unease is echoed by JOURNAL guest James K. Galbraith

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Interview with James Galbraith

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By BillMoyers - Oct. 30 (Interview) - We need to find another path for economic expansion. We need to set a strategic direction. Our problem now, our big social and environmental problem, is energy. It's climate change. It's the greenhouse gas emission issue. If we built a set of institutions that could deal with that problem effectively, you could employ a large part of the labor force for a generation, dealing with that. And you'd then make that profitable for private enterprise to get into in a serious way.

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Learning to Love Insider Trading

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 25 (Opinion) - Here's a hot tip: Want to keep companies honest, make the markets work more efficiently and encourage investors to diversify? Let insiders buy and sell, argues Donald J. Boudreaux.

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Time to bust up the world's banking giants

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Post - By Diane Francis - Oct. 24 (Editorial) - The world desperately needs Glass Steagall on steroids. Banking must be atomized -- a la America's 1933 Glass Steagall lelgislation -- in order to separate high-risk investment banking from taxpayer-insured deposits. Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=02859c06-69a3-45f1-a321-dff7755d2de8#ixzz0UuegnxNd The New Financial Post Stock Market Challenge starts in October. You could WIN your share of $60,000 in prizing. Register NOW

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The Consensus On Big Banks Begins To Move « The Baseline Scenario

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

baselinescenario.com - By Simon Johnson - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - ust when our biggest banks thought they were out of the woods and into the money, the official consensus in their favor begins to crack. The Obama administration’s publicly stated view – from the highest level in the White House - remains that the banks cannot or should not be broken up. Their argument is that the big banks can be regulated into permanently low risk behavior.

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Goldman Can Spare You a Dime

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - The less we know about Goldman Sachs, the easier it is for reckless gambling to return to capitalism’s casino.

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Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American "Populism" and the "Farcical" Financial Crisis

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - Oct. 15 (Interview) - Zizek’s latest offering also excerpted in the October issue of Harper"s magazine opens with the words: “The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.” He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear-gas and mass arrests. The message, he writes, was “loud and clear, and the police were used to literally stifle the truth.”

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Misguided Monetary Mentalities

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - One lesson from the Great Depression is that you should never underestimate the destructive power of bad ideas. And some of the bad ideas that helped cause the Depression have, alas, proved all too durable: in modified form, they continue to influence economic debate today.

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Preventing Medicare and Social Security from going broke

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Dean Baker, Maya MacGuineas - Oct. 10 (Opinion) - Preventing Medicare and Social Security from going broke

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Why Obama Must Spend More

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Joe Conason, - Oct. 08 (Opinion) - The latest signals from the White House suggest that President Obama now realizes he must do more - and quickly - to ease the economic suffering of working families. He knows that most Americans believe his administration and Congress have so far provided more help to major banks and Wall Street investment firms than to workers and small companies, as a survey released by pollster Peter Hart reported recently.

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Conservative Dems Are Killing the Consumer Protection We All Need

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Zach Carter - Oct. 01 (Opinion) - The standard partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans doesn't capture the main source of tension on the panel. The real contest is between bankers and citizens. And if you include the 17 Democrats who are card-carrying members of the conservative Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions, the banks hold a four-seat majority. If you add in the otherwise centrist or progressive members who routinely vote with the bank lobby, then the advantage increases to seven or eight seats. Big Finance wins.

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Banks Too Big to Fail? Break ’Em Up

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

madison.com - By Dave Zweifel - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - The Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy recently gave its first-ever "Golden Throne Award" to the president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, Edward Yingling. Suffice it to say that Yingling wasn't thrilled.

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Interview: Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Sep. 27 (Interview) - Economy Could Now Be In A "Far More Dangerous Place"

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G20: The two sides of the global economy

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Thomas Mucha - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - As G20 leaders snake their way to Pittsburgh from all corners, they face very different circumstances from 12 months ago when the possibility of financial and economic catastrophe was all too real.

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For ACORN, Truth Lost Amid the Din

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Harold Meyerson - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - Actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent. Why you might not know that.

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Editorial: If you thought ACORN was bad ...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - Sep. 23 (Editorial) - We've all heard plenty about a private U.S. government contractor whose employees were caught behaving unspeakably and which now faces the swift and brutal withdrawal of taxpayer dollars by a Congress demanding accountability. That was ACORN, of

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Chinese Exceptionalism

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Philip Bowring - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Many countries, with China the most vociferous, wish for a more balanced world in which other currencies play significant roles in trade finance, capital flows and exchange reserves. But while the cries against U.S. privileges ring out loud and clear, scant notice is taken of the exceptionalism successfully pursued by China.

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Why the Dow is Hitting 10,000 While Everyone Else is Cutting Back

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert Reich - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - So how can the Dow be flirting with 10,000 when consumers, who make up 70 percent of the economy, have had to cut way back on buying because they have no money? Jobs continue to disappear. One out of six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed.

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Alternatives Are Simply too expensive

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Stephen F. Hayward - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - The U.S. and Western Europe can point to a remarkable achievement over the past 40 years: significant reductions in air pollution with only a modest effect on our economic growth and prosperity. So, why can't we expect to do the same with greenhouse-gas emissions?

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A lopsided world tilts upward, slowly

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - Sep. 19 (Editorial) - The world economy is shifting gears. It has gone from reverse to neutral – even the US is probably out of recession, says Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman. The task facing leaders at the Group of 20 nations’ summit in Pittsburgh next week will be to pick up speed – but safely.

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