“It makes me ill how callously people still talk about ripping off clients,” the Goldman Sachs whistleblower, Greg Smith, wrote in his March 14th public resignation letter. The 33-year-old executive who quit the company’s London office where he ran its derivatives shop reinforces the public perception of Goldman Sachs less as a venerable Wall...
Paul Krugman recently penned an insightful article where he argues that the 1999-2009 decade should be called the “Big Zero” decade because over the course of ten years there was no real job growth or notable “progress” in tackling any of the nation’s problems. But Krugman’s view, I’m afraid, is overly optimistic. What we...
The Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s “National Defending the American Dream Summit” held last weekend at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia was an assemblage whose only distinguishing feature was its astonishing homogeneity both in thought and in demography. While channel surfing through C-SPAN I caught a full camera pan where the unbearable...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Republican colleagues are using the trauma of the economic collapse and the record state budget deficit to implement policies they’ve been advocating for years. “This budget ought to be solved in one chunk, at one time,” the governor says, “and let’s do it quickly.” As usual, the working...
In his most recent piece in the New York Times Paul Krugman asks: “Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?” Here in Sacramento I’ve watched the disaster unfold before my eyes like...
Obama’s “Fireside Chat” (FDR or Jimmy Carter?)
For well over a year now I’ve been wondering why President Barack Obama, (who is a talented communicator and a student of history), failed to recognize Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s example of the necessity of speaking directly to the American people. Tonight, at long last, Obama gave his first “fireside chat.” He should have done...
Read more »