As America’s Great Middle Class crumbles, the Rich are again grasping for every possible regulatory rollback and tax cut, all the better to fund some final bacchanal of late-stage capitalism, a well-catered cocktail party of aging men and women wearing…
Tag: Wall Street
Seeking Justice for Wall St.’s Victims
International agencies and global movements target human rights violators from small or isolated countries, but the idea of holding accountable the powerful and well-connected who cause much greater human suffering is considered unthinkable, a paradigm that Danny Schechter challenges.
Financial Magic Thinking Dies Hard
Since the early supply-side days of Ronald Reagan, the Right has pretended that slashing taxes on the rich will generate extra revenue, thus more than paying for itself. The reality has turned out differently, but Michael Winship says that hasn’t…
The ‘Winners’ Take Everything
Exclusive: Many Americans still wonder how it happened, how did a country admired for its Great Middle Class, which sustained strong democratic institutions, end up with Third-World-style wealth inequality and a democracy to match? In reviewing Winner-Take-All Politics, James DiEugenio…
Wall Street Parties On
Police have cleared out most Occupy Wall Street encampments around America, but no one is stopping the ultra-rich from partying on with the trillions of dollars in bailout help from the feds and the Fed, as Bill Moyers and Michael…
Sundering the Social Contract
In political philosophy, the idea of a social contract is that the individual surrenders some rights for the benefits of living in a civilized society that has reasonable rules for all. However, in recent decades, the greedy rich have torn…
Can Financial Markets Avoid Collapse?
The world’s financial system continues to teeter near a very nasty brink, with the United States and Europe disagreeing about how to pull back from the edge. Danny Shechter sees crisis, crisis, everywhere.
Is Obama’s TR Rhetoric Just Talk?
In the same Kansas town where Teddy Roosevelt castigated his era’s financial speculators 101 years ago, President Barack Obama spoke to the concerns of America’s 99 percent, those who have struggled while the super-rich prospered. But is Obama’s new rhetoric…
Cleansing Wall Street of Blame
The Right’s giant megaphone is reversing the narrative for today’s crisis: It is Barack Obama’s “food-stamp presidency” and the Occupy demands for fairness that are at fault for the hard economic times, not Wall Street’s unregulated greed increasing the need for food stamps…
As Wall Street’s Universe Collapses
Wall Street has created a “moral” universe that elevates short-term profits into the ultimate “good,” rewarding those who can achieve them with massive bonuses. The movie Margin Call follows these players when their universe collapses, writes Lisa Pease.