economy - Cynthia McCune on Diigo

02 Nov 09

22 Oct 09

Safety Nets for the Rich - Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...20herbert.html - Preview

banks bailout unemployment budget cuts economy nytimes

If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist. Break it up.

10 Oct 09

Igniting the Growth of Jobs - Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

"Incredibly, some 40,000 teachers have lost their jobs over the past year, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research."

www.nytimes.com/...10herbert.html - Preview

unemployment budget cuts jobs economy education obama reich

The latest unemployment rate for California is a knee-buckling 12.2 percent, the highest since World War II.
Incredibly, some 40,000 teachers have lost their jobs over the past year, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
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- Without jobs, you don’t have a genuine recovery.
- Another promising approach is substantially increased federal aid to state and local governments, above and beyond what is already occurring. Local governments from one coast to the other are facing budget meltdowns and are slashing services and personnel.
- The lessons of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s are right in front of us, ready to be studied, analyzed, updated and applied to the present-day needs of the country.
- If we’re serious about getting the U.S. back on track economically, we will have to take our heads out of the sand at some point with regard to the nation’s infrastructure. America has to be rebuilt, modernized and re-energized — from its water and sewer systems to its schools to the smart grid and the alternative energy sources that so many are talking about and beyond. That’s where the jobs are for the long term, and that’s the only route to a truly flourishing future.

13 Jul 09

The Human Equation - Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...11herbert.html - Preview

economy unemployment jobs recession nytimes

The joblessness the nation is experiencing is crushing any hope of a real economic recovery. With so many Americans maxed out on their credit cards and with the value of their homes deep in the tank, the only money available to spend in most cases is from paychecks.
My choice would be a “Rebuild America” campaign that would put men and women to work repairing, maintaining, designing and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure in the broadest sense — everything from roads and schools and the electrical power grid to innovative environmental initiatives and a sparkling new mass transportation network, including high-speed rail systems.
One of the ways of financing such an effort would be through the creation of a national infrastructure bank, which would provide federal investment capital for approved projects and use that money to leverage additional private investment.
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- hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers will begin losing their jobless benefits, just about the only thing keeping them above water, by the end of the summer.
- There are now five unemployed workers for every job opening in the U.S.

14 Apr 09

Longer Unemployment for Those 45 and Older - NYTimes.com

There but for the grace of God...

www.nytimes.com/...13age.html - Preview

jobs unemployment boomers age discrimination economy

Older workers must also battle stereotypes about their energy and adaptability, as well as the reality that their health care costs are higher.
Dr. Lahey found that workers under 50 were more than 40 percent more likely to be called for an interview.
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- once older workers lose their jobs, Dr. Munnell said, “then it’s horrible.” They have a much harder time finding work again than younger job-seekers do, and statistics appear to show that it is harder for them in this recession than in previous ones.
- Even when they finally land jobs, they typically experience a much steeper drop in earnings than their younger counterparts.
- Workers ages 45 and over form a disproportionate share of the hard-luck recession category, the long-term unemployed — those who have been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

23 Mar 09

AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions | Salon

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

aig economy banking money

None of these tax havens could exist without the connivance or at least the cooperation of the world's most powerful governments, which remain dominated by financial industry lobbyists even now. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has sought greater transparency from the tax havens for years, hearing promises from most and defiance from a few.
Now Congress and the White House should pass such legislation and make breaking the tax havens a high priority in partnership with the European Union, the OECD and World Bank. They could start by threatening to outlaw transactions between American banks and financial institutions in any country that rejects new rules for transparency and reciprocal information.
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- hen the cost of these shenanigans was last estimated two years ago, the U.S. government's annual loss in revenue due to tax avoidance by major corporations and super-rich individuals was pegged at about $100 billion
- According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens.

08 Mar 09

Will Bunch: What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

"the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment."

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ered-newsrooms-c_b_172397.html - Preview

Journalism Jon Stewart economy

And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?
And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?
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- And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?
- The First Amendment doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate.
- Tear down this wall... of pretending that the media itself isn't a major player in American society, and isn't a factor in most big stories.
- The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media? Balanced reporting is important, but a balanced, modulated tone of voice?
- Jon Stewart's act of journalism -- reported, of course, by his ace team of writers -- worked because there were no interviews at all. It all hung instead on meticulous research, dredging up lethal quips of CNBC's stock pumping hosts to hang them with their own undeniable words
- Great research trumps good access to the powerful:
- the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game?
- The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age.
- it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted, "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this."

16 Feb 09

They Sure Showed That Obama - Columnist Frank Rich - NYTimes.com

I sure hope Rich is right.

www.nytimes.com/...15rich.html - Preview

Obama economy stimulus Republicans

Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition.
Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started.
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- The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama “losing control,” also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill.
- Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits.
- At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that “perhaps we’ve overanalyzed it, we don’t know what we’re talking about.” But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity.
- This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets.
- Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.

28 Jan 09

The Same Old Song - OpEd Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...27herbert.html - Preview

economy taxes Republicans

What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?
The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.
The Republican answer to this turmoil?
Tax cuts.
They need to go into rehab.
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- When the G.O.P. talks, nobody should listen. Republicans have argued, with the collaboration of much of the media, that they could radically cut taxes while simultaneously balancing the federal budget, when, in fact, big income-tax cuts inevitably lead to big budget deficits. We listened to the G.O.P. and what do we have now? A trillion-dollar-plus deficit and an economy in shambles.
  This is the party that preached fiscal discipline and then cut taxes in time of war. This is the party that still wants to put the torch to Social Security and Medicare. This is a party that, given a choice between Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, would choose Ronald Reagan in a heartbeat.
  Why is anyone still listening?

11 Jan 09

Obama’s Biggest Challenge - Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert- NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...10herbert.html - Preview

obama economy unemployment

With credit tight, savings depleted, the stock market in the tank and home prices in a state of collapse, the only way to get real money into the hands of ordinary Americans (and thus back into the economy) is through employment. The way to truly stimulate the economy and save the jobs of anxiety-ridden workers who are still employed is to get the unemployed back to work as soon as possible.
The economy will not be saved by putting a pitiful $500 into the hands of the average taxpayer. And it won’t be saved by gift-wrapped concessions to the G.O.P. in the form of business tax cuts that the president-elect is said to be considering.
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- Forget the feel-good but doomed-to-fail effort to play nice-nice with the rabid partisans of the right who were the ones most responsible for ruining the economy in the first place.
- Forget the feel-good but doomed-to-fail effort to play nice-nice with the rabid partisans of the right who were the ones most responsible for ruining the economy in the first place.
- This is an emergency. There is one overriding mission for the incoming Obama administration when it comes to dealing with the economy, and that’s putting Americans back to work.
- more than one in every eight workers in America is jobless or underemployed. That’s 21 million people. And it’s not even counting the so-called discouraged workers, who have given up looking for a job.

25 Dec 08

Time to Reboot America - Op-Ed Thomas Friedman -NYTimes.com

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long...we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

www.nytimes.com/...24friedman.html - Preview

nytimes Friedman reboot economy infrastructure

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.”
America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage.
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- If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.
- That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover.
- our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
- If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity?
- f we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity?

19 Dec 08

Pan Am Dies, America Lives - Columnist Roger Cohen - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...18Cohen.html - Preview

nytimes economy bailout Big Three carmakers

Pan Am, which had been a leading U.S. international airline since the 1930s, collapsed in 1991. Like other great U.S. companies, it died in the marketplace because it blundered. Churn — of people and businesses — has always defined America. Nobody subsidized U.S. Steel or the automaker Packard in the belief that the world without them was unthinkable.
Churn requires death as well as birth. The artificial preservation of the inert dampens the quest for the new.
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- I know, hundreds of thousands of jobs are directly at stake, hundreds of thousands more indirectly. This is not an economy that’s creating new jobs for those lost. Why should autoworkers get worse treatment than bankers?
- If it came to that after bankruptcy proceedings, the United States could live with two auto companies rather than three.
- The whole financial crisis is about the death of responsibility: the buck stopped nowhere.
- Irresponsibility has also characterized Detroit. I don’t see how you restore responsibility with a bailout. Obama has a deeper task than changing the economy; he has to change the culture.
- The risk of saving the moribund is the demise of the vital — and the long-term cost of that is incalculable.

10 Dec 08

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast

broadcast.oreilly.com/...why-are-newspapers-dying.html - Preview

future of newspapers newspapers future of news decentralization journalism economy

Beyond the obvious factor of a badly
engineered business deal that couldn't stand the hurricane force
winds of the current economic meltdown, there is a more troublesome
underlying story ... newspapers themselves are dying.
The emergence of the Internet proved
newspapers' most challenging competitor, and the one that ultimately
may have managed to do the newspaper industry in altogether.
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- Put another way, organizations such as
  O'Reilly Media, Tech Crunch, the Huffington Post, or even individuals such as Robert
  Scoble are able to capture comparable or greater audiences than
  organizations such as the New York Times - and are usually able to
  do it at tenths of pennies to the dollar in comparison to the Times.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) sounds like a
  technical discipline, but it is in fact far more of a marketing
  phenomenon - how do you develop searches in order to make site X
  the most likely to come up in search engines when searches are typed
  in by the people the marketers are most likely trying to attract. It
  is similar to the kind of marketing analysis that ad buyers make when
  attempting to penetrate newspaper readerships ... but it also
  competes directly with those newspapers for revenue from an
  advertiser. (It's worth noting that many direct marketing companies
  have either morphed into or established SEO departments).
- The Tribune deal is an example of the
  broader conglomeration of papers. There are comparatively few
  independent newspapers anymore.
- As prestige papers like the Times move
  into this spiral of declining quality and fewer stories, this is also
  having the impact of making it harder for these companies to
  effectively leverage their brand online, at a time when the online
  news space itself is just really beginning to solidify into distinct
  brand names - and those brand names are increasingly tied into
  individuals rather than corporate identities.
- When the economy finally does recover, new advertising
  companies will be the first companies to emerge from the doldrums.
  However, these companies will be filled (if history is any
  indication) by bright, eager twenty-somethings far more experienced
  with Facebook, Google, iPhones, YouTube and Twitter than with
  newspaper or magazine advertising, and they will be far more likely
  to think in those terms not only in the production of new advertising
  media, but also in pushing specific sales channels over others. As
  most newpapers can be thought of as advertising vehicles with a thin
  layer of editorial laid over the top, the consequences of this will
  be devastating.
- Perhaps the final challenge facing
  newspapers (and to a lesser extent magazines) comes from the
  declining authoritativeness of the newspaper as the arbiter of what
  is editorial content - in essence, what is news.
- Google, as an aggregator of content,
  became the table of contents for the new media, while Wikipedia
  became its fact checking archive.
- Bloggers became its reporters, and
  as such they are increasingly able to beat the "professional"
  journalists to "the story" because such bloggers were local
  to where the story was. Moreover, such bloggers could often
  disseminate queries to others within their networks within minutes of
  a contentious story being published, a fact that was displayed
  constantly throughout the 2008 political campaign.
- These bloggers may not necessarily be
  "journalists" in the same sense that a newspaper or
  magazine reporter is, though this more reflects the bias of these
  same reporters than it does any real grounding in professionalism or
  ethics. The blogosphere is developing its own sense of ethics
  concerning what journalism is and isn't, one that's different but no
  less legitimate in its approach (and the blogosphere is generally
  brutal to those who do not get their facts straight, something which
  most print journalists have long not had to worry much about beyond
  the level of theoretical exercise).
- one of the roles of the press should be to provide a
  spotlight on the inner workings of both governments and corporations,
  and the fact that bloggers are now doing this more than their print
  colleagues (and as a consequence, are being seen increasingly by such
  organizations as being "dangerous" enough to jail) gives to
  bloggers a degree of legitimacy that is difficult to argue with.
- While newspapers are likely on their
  way to the recycle bin, editorial journalism isn't. We are moving to
  an era where journalistic integrity and personal prestige of the
  individual journalist is becoming more important than the prestige of
  the newspaper or other media that the journalist writes for.
  Journalism is becoming decentralized, and there are many indications
  that this is, just perhaps, a good thing.
- What I've seen emerging is that blogging really falls into several distinct categories
- Newsletter/Analysis. The blogger in this case is dispensing advice or providing an analysis of a particular domain.
- Journalists. These bloggers are in fact the most direct analog to the print journalists
- Product critics.
- Political commentators.
- Celebrity Bloggers.
- Corporate/Governmental Bloggers. These are people that effectively communicate what their company, group, or agency are doing.
- Creative Professionals. Authors, photographers, artists or others who view blogging as a way of communicating with their audience or potential market.
- Technical Professionals.
- In other words, bloggers are for the most part just writers that in a different day and age may have been journalists, may have written in technical journals, may have corresponded via (real) mailing lists, or may have been public relations or marketing types.
- It's also worth noting that there are comparatively few areas of writing, regardless of whether the writing is done on or off-line, where the reader pays the writer directly.
- I think that the market for writers to go directly to the reader is expanding pretty dramatically
- For the most part, professional bloggers are like any other professional - they maintain a consistent pattern of publishing regularly, have good writing skills and are effective communicators, are able to write across a fairly broad range of topics, and are often better at analysis than is the norm. In other words, they apply professional standards of ethics and commitment to their blogging, and not surprisingly they reap the benefits from that.

02 Dec 08

Newspaper Ad Revenue Falls Nearly $2 Billion - Advertising Age - MediaWorks

adage.com/...article - Preview

future of newspapers advertising economy newspapers

the rest of the year is likely to look even worse.
Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 billion in the third quarter for a record 18.1% decline
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- Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 billion in the third quarter for a record 18.1% decline
- newspapers' online ad revenue fell for the second quarter in a row.
- Newspapers' online ad sales, where everyone is hoping some part of the future business model resides, accelerated their decline with a 3% drop. Online ad sales slipped 2.4% in the second quarter.

28 Nov 08

Stimulus for Skeptics - Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks - NYTimes.com

Targeted bail-outs

www.nytimes.com/...28brooks.html - Preview

nytimes economy

some guiding principles for those designing the $500 billion stimulus plan the next administration seems set on: Don’t just throw more money into the sugar rush. Spend money on projects that will enhance the long-term economic health of the country even without a crisis. Do what you would do anyway, just do it faster.
Send federal money to the states, but make sure a lot of it goes to state universities. There’s going to be increased demand for their services at the same time their budgets are cut. We can’t weaken that link in the social mobility chain.
Extend unemployment insurance, but also create vouchers and loans so workers can get the skills they need to move on.
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- Accelerate depreciation on energy efficient goods and services. Increase tax credits for energy efficient buildings and appliances.
- Create a network of social entrepreneurship investment banks. These regionally operated semi-public funds would invest in the best local community organizations, so they could bring their ideas to scale.

12 Nov 08

Economic Scene - Buying Binge Slams to Halt - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...12leonhardt.html - Preview

economy

The panic on Wall Street has eased in the last few weeks,

24 Oct 08

Greenspan shocked at failure of free markets

Greenspan finally realizes Ayn Rand is not only dead, but that she was a novelist...and stops believing in the fiction of a self-correcting free market.

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi - Preview

greenspan sfchron economy free market

It was a remarkable moment: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a lifelong champion of free markets, publicly questioning the philosophy that guided him throughout his years as the world's most powerful economic policymaker.
Greenspan said that, in light of a crisis he characterized as "a once-in-a-century financial tsunami," he was wrong to think financial markets could police themselves. He incorrectly had expected the discipline of the market would prevent financial institutions from taking life-threatening risks.
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- Greenspan replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked.
- For his whole adult life, the former Fed chairman has been a devotee of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated free-market capitalism as the world's most moral economic order and advocated a strict laissez-faire approach to government regulation of the marketplace.
- "When I watched him this morning, I actually found myself feeling a little bit sorry for him," said Betty Blecha, an economist at San Francisco State University. "When ideologues find their ideology crashing around them, it's something to see."
  
  Blecha said Greenspan's reassessment impressed her.
  
  "He was intellectually honest about admitting the failings of an ideology he's believed in all his adult life. I think personally this has been a very difficult period for him."

12 Oct 08

The Mask Slips - Op-Ed - Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

Voting has consequences.

www.nytimes.com/...11herbert.html - Preview

nytimes Republicans GOP voodoo economics Reagan Bush economy

the way you vote matters
For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing
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- Voting has consequences.
- how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years
- how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years
- In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan’s own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president’s tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.
- In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan’s own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president’s tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.
- Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.

09 Oct 08

Saved by the Deficit? Op-Ed - Robert Reich - NYTimes.com

Why it's not 1993 (or 1929) all over again.

www.nytimes.com/...09reich.html - Preview

economy reich recession depression bailout infrastructure

At first glance, January 2009 is starting to look a lot like January 1993.
Then, the federal deficit was running at roughly $300 billion a year, or about 5 percent of gross domestic product, way too high for comfort. By contrast, the deficit for the 2009 fiscal year is now projected to be $410 billion, or about 3.3 percent of gross domestic product. That’s not too worrying. But if the Treasury shovels out the full $700 billion of bailout money next year, the deficit could balloon to more than 6 percent of gross domestic product, the highest since 1983. And if the nation plunges into a deeper recession, with tax revenues dropping and domestic product shrinking, the deficit will be even larger as a proportion of the economy.
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- As America’s housing stock regains value, as we all hope it will, bad debts become better debts, and the Treasury will be able to resell the securities for at least as much as it paid, if not for a profit. And if there is a shortfall, the bailout bill allows the president to impose a fee on Wall Street to fill it.
- All economic indicators are now pointing toward a deepening recession. Unemployment is already high, and the trend is not encouraging.
- there’s marked difference between 1993 and 2009. Then, some of our highways, bridges, levees and transit systems needed repair. Today, they are crumbling. In 1993, some of our children were in classrooms too crowded to learn in, and some districts were shutting preschool and after-school programs. Today, such inadequacies are endemic. In 1993, some 35 million Americans had no health insurance and millions more were barely able to afford it. Today, 50 million are without insurance, and a large swath of the middle class is barely holding on. In 1993, climate change was a problem. Now, it’s an emergency.
- Moreover, without adequate public investment, the vast majority of Americans will be condemned to a lower standard of living for themselves and their children. The top 1 percent now takes home about 20 percent of total national income. As recently as 1980, it took home 8 percent. Although the economy has grown considerably since 1980, the middle class’s share has shrunk. That’s a problem not just because it strikes so many as being unfair, but also because it’s starting to limit the capacity of most Americans to buy the goods and services we produce without going deep into debt. The last time the top 1 percent took home 20 percent of national income, not incidentally, was 1928.
- Moreover, without adequate public investment, the vast majority of Americans will be condemned to a lower standard of living for themselves and their children. The top 1 percent now takes home about 20 percent of total national income. As recently as 1980, it took home 8 percent. Although the economy has grown considerably since 1980, the middle class’s share has shrunk. That’s a problem not just because it strikes so many as being unfair, but also because it’s starting to limit the capacity of most Americans to buy the goods and services we produce without going deep into debt. The last time the top 1 percent took home 20 percent of national income, not incidentally, was 1928.

03 Oct 08

When Madmen Reign - Op-Ed Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...30herbert.html - Preview

economy McCain bailout madmen

George H.W. Bush warned us about “voodoo economics” in 1980, but the ideologues clamped a gag on him and put him on the Gipper’s ticket. For much of the time since then, the madmen of the right have carried the day. They were freed of their remaining few restraints with the ascendance of George W. Bush in 2000.
These were the reckless clowns who led us into the foolish multitrillion-dollar debacle in Iraq and who crafted tax policies that enormously benefited millionaires and billionaires while at the same time ran up staggering amounts of government debt. This is the crowd that contributed mightily to the greatest disparities in wealth in the U.S. since the gilded age.
This was the crowd that cut the cords of corporate and financial regulations and in myriad other ways gleefully hacked away at the best interests of the United States.
He should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (“this is a mental recession”) Gramm, were right there running with them.
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- The inescapable disconnect between rhetoric and reality is often stark. Senator McCain has been ranting recently about the excessive pay and “bloated golden parachutes” of failed corporate executives. And yet one of his closest advisers on economic matters is Carly Fiorina, who was forced out as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Her golden parachute was an estimated $42 million.

Cynthia McCune's Library tagged economy → View Popular

Too Little of a Good Thing - Op-Ed Columnist Paul Krugman -NYTimes.com

Safety Nets for the Rich - Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

Igniting the Growth of Jobs - Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

The Human Equation - Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

Longer Unemployment for Those 45 and Older - NYTimes.com

AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions | Salon

Will Bunch: What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

They Sure Showed That Obama - Columnist Frank Rich - NYTimes.com

The Same Old Song - OpEd Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

Obama’s Biggest Challenge - Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert- NYTimes.com

Time to Reboot America - Op-Ed Thomas Friedman -NYTimes.com

Pan Am Dies, America Lives - Columnist Roger Cohen - NYTimes.com

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast

Newspaper Ad Revenue Falls Nearly $2 Billion - Advertising Age - MediaWorks

Stimulus for Skeptics - Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks - NYTimes.com

Economic Scene - Buying Binge Slams to Halt - NYTimes.com

Greenspan shocked at failure of free markets

The Mask Slips - Op-Ed - Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

Saved by the Deficit? Op-Ed - Robert Reich - NYTimes.com

When Madmen Reign - Op-Ed Bob Herbert - NYTimes.com

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