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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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Scenes from Iowa's recession

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

Des Moines Register - By Michael Bugeja - Nov. 23 (Special Report) - They arrive at Gray's Lake Park in the morning, basking on borrowed time of a mild mid-November, realizing the winter can arrive any day like layoffs without warning. They are the unemployed, strolling with friends, partners or retirees, or sometimes alone. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone knows someone else out of work in what some call "The Second Depression." They are neighbors, acquaintances, family members, colleagues, friends. They may be you. They belong to "The New Poverty," people who followed the rules, paid bills and mortgages on time and whose lives were scuttled by Ponzi and subprime schemes happening far away.

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Fed under fire as public anger mounts

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

Associated Press - By Tom Raum - Nov. 23 (News Analysis) - Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody's punching bag. Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say. The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is always fair game for criticism and second-guessing, usually over interest rate actions. But this year the criticism is much broader as Congress responds to widespread public anger that the Fed bailed out Wall Street but not ordinary Americans, and with unemployment in double digits.

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Lessons From the Japanese: Time to Stop Borrowing Money and Start Printing It

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

TruthOut - By Ellen Hodgson Brown - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - Miners used to keep canaries in coal mines as an early warning device. If the air was so bad that it killed the canary, the miners would soon be next. Japan may be the canary for the out-of-control deficit spending policies now being pursued in the United States and the United Kingdom.

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The Cost of Dying

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

CBS News - By Steve Kroft - Nov. 23 (Special Report) - Every medical study ever conducted has concluded that 100 percent of all Americans will eventually die. This comes as no great surprise, but the amount of money being spent at the very end of people's lives probably will. Last year, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives - that's more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenditures may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked. You might think this would be an obvious thing for Congress and the president to address as they try to reform health care. But what used to be a bipartisan issue has become a politically explosive one - a perfect example of the costs that threaten to bankrupt the country and how hard it's going to be to rein them in

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Weighing Jobs and Deficit

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

Wall Street Journal - By Elizabeth Williamson - Nov. 23 (News Report) - The White House is lukewarm about proposals by congressional Democrats to introduce broad legislation to create jobs, instead favoring targeted measures that would be less likely to inflate the deficit, administration officials said. There is as yet no agreement within the White House or in Congress on how to try to curb the U.S. jobless rate. But the differences in opinion suggest that rifts could emerge among Democrats as they wrestle with how to beat back the highest unemployment rate in a generation.

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Dislocated in America

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Nov. 21 (Editorial) - What may be occurring is a seismic shift in the American economy, one that could leave as many as one in four Americans permanently unemployed or so drastically underemployed that he or she can’t make ends meet. That’s the situation today. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has resulted in the greatest social dislocation since the Great Depression.

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How Stimulating

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 21 (Comment) - Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore. The New York Times reminds us today that "dispassionate analysts" agree that a fair look at the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

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Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody

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

AlterNet - By Nick Turse - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Despite ever rosier economic predictions and a surging stock market, the body count from the economic crisis is destined only to grow in the weeks and months ahead. In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a "sandwich artist" at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn't visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: "'Because I don't have any money. I don't have a job. I don't have anything to eat. When things get better, I'll come see you.'"

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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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The New Arms Race

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

Huffington Post - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - America will not win the arms race of the 21st century with rockets, but with robust investment in and support of U.S.-based green technology. While Congress dawdles, China is clobbering us.

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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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Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

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The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

cohort11.americanobserver.net - By Latoya Egwuekwe - Nov. 19 (Research) - (Video) Unemployment rates by county, over time.

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The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Geithner Should Step Down

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Linda R. Monk, J.D. - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - The problem with Geithner is not that he is by nature a corrupt man.

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The Ugly Truth about Jobs

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - companies have found that they can shed workers and rely on technological advances and overseas factories to operate with a lot fewer U.S. employees.

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Obama Web site claims stimulus jobs in non-existent places

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By James Rosen - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The federal Web site that tracks spending from the Obama administration's $787 billion economic stimulus program reports that the program has created thousands of jobs in congressional districts that don't exist.

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General Electric Pursues Pot of Government Stimulus Gold

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Elizabeth Williamson, Paul Glader - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The financial crisis hasn't been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses. But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation's corner offices: "We're all Democrats now."

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High noon in Washington, D.C.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:05:22 -0800

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Nov. 18 -

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The Dirt on Worms

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

agweb.com - By Pam Smith - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The earthworm has long been considered the farmer’s friend. Their burrowing has always been thought to aerate the soil while their droppings provide fertilizer. No-till farmers count on these tireless workers to improve soil tilth. And on their worst day, earthworms sacrifice everything to land us a lunch from our favorite fishing hole

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Memo to Warren Buffett: Put Down the Pom-Poms and Tell Us the Truth About the Economy

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Arianna Huffington - Nov. 17 (Opinion) - Difficult times need wise men to tell difficult truths. And, for many years, Warren Buffett, the "Sage of Omaha," has done just that. For example, he was one of the first to sound the alarm about the danger of derivatives, warning in 2003 that they

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China Solar Panel Maker Sets First U.S. Plant

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Adam Aston - Nov. 16 (News Report) - China's Suntech Power Holdings (STP) is no newcomer to the U.S. Last May, President Barack Obama toured the U.S.'s largest solar panel installation at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. There, row upon row of shiny black Suntech solar panels span 140 acres, cranking out up to 14 megawatts of electricity on sunny days.

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G.M., Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Nick Bunkley - Nov. 16 (News Report) - it [ GM ] plans to make a $1 billion payment to the federal government in december, more than five years before the loans are due, and to make similar quarterly payments after that.

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GM Plans to Repay U.S. Loan

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By John D. Stoll - Nov. 16 (News Report) - General Motors Co. plans to begin paying back a $6.7 billion loan it owes the U.S. government starting late this year, putting it on track to potentially repay the entire note by the middle of 2011, said a person familiar with the matter. But in a move that could be controversial and risky, the car maker plans to use other money it received from the government to pay back the borrowing.

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Big costs weigh on troop debate

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Christopher Drew - Nov. 15 (News Analysis) - even if Obama chooses a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan's new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could reach $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration. Such an escalation in military spending would be a politically volatile issue for Obama at a time when the government budget deficit is soaring, the economy is weak and he is trying to pass a health-care overhaul.

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