Rethinking the Economy

Now this is how to do a protest! Having Robin Hoods breach a marsh/”moat” using a portable bridge and demanding justice at JP Morgan Chase’s Shareholder Meeting — you gotta admire their style.
To understand what these protests are targeting, here’s the story of one of the protesters:
Virginia Holwell, a 59-year-old shareholder [...]

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Great article in the Huffington Post about the epic battle in DC between retailer lobbyists and bank lobbyists over the fee retailers pay when you use your credit card. My favorite quote:
One frustrated moderate Democratic senator asks to remain anonymous so he can speak freely about his legislative education. “I’m surprised at how much [...]

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Exhibit A of why passing good policy isn’t enough, courtesy of Think Progress:
According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, the banks’ spending on lobbying in the first quarter of 2011 was actually higher than it was in the first quarter of 2010, when Dodd-Frank was actively being debated:
Wall Street and the financial [...]

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about how I think we should go on the offensive. Other folks have been trying to answer the some question – and some of them are trying to actually do something. Steve Lerner, ex-SEIU organizing strategist and one of my heroes, is one of them. Here’s his [...]

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As we saw last week in the tale of John Kasich and the Ohio state pension funds, the biggest danger facing these pension funds is the unchecked power of Wall Street companies. The economy’s rules enshrine a predatory set of values, encouraging Wall Street to act like wolves and treat pension funds like sheep – [...]

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State pension funds are a mess — and it’s all the fault of those greedy teachers and firefighters, right? While they may have played a part, the real drivers of this twisted tale have managed so far to hide in the shadows. Luckily, Ohio Governor John Kasich is here to school you, courtesy of the [...]

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Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has a great, depressing piece on ” Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” In it, he has example after example of big players committing fraud of either getting off scott free or getting a slap on wrist. One small example:
Another major firm, Bank of America, was caught hiding $5.8 billion in [...]

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Recently there’ve been a few articles about the possibility of a bipartisan agreement on corporate tax reform. The Economist’s M.S.says, it’s not going to happen. Here’s why:
The ability to negotiate tax breaks is a core competency of large American businesses, and the ability to award tax breaks is a core competency of politicians. And [...]

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I’ve been reading John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail: the Logic of Economic Calamities, and in it I discovered a great Adams Smith quote. You probably know that Smith wasn’t an unthinking free market cheerleader. What you might not know is that Smith believed government should stomp on financial speculation:
Smith and his successors also [...]

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Some folks have argued that given the Republican’s Obama-must-fail strategy and the Conservadems desire to punish working families, there’s no way Obama could have prevented the economy from going off the cliff. Brad DeLong has published a great, depressing talk that’s a center-liberal economist perspective on what Obama could’ve done despite these obstacles.
Although [...]

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