Posts Tagged ‘ Wall Street ’

The Debate We Never Had

October 3, 2012
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It has become clear by now that the Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, views American society as an aggregate of atomized individuals each seeking to maximize personal gain; these “makers” owe nothing to the rest of humanity and are the true engines of all that is righteous and good in the world. The...

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SuperPACs and LIBOR: A Heck of a Way to Run Capitalist Democracy

July 9, 2012
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Everybody seems to know (whether they’re willing to admit it or not) that the 2012 elections are going to be the most corrupted elections by corporate money than any held in this country since the Gilded Age. Unregulated, anonymous and laundered cash is being pumped into the system at an unprecedented rate. Meanwhile, the...

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Welcome to the New Normal America

June 4, 2012
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The measly 69,000 private sector jobs added last month and the shrinking job count over the past few months illustrate our “new normal.” At this snail’s pace it will take a couple of decades (assuming there are no new crises) before we get back to the “good old days” of the 2005-unemployment rate. When...

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Both Parties Want to Stay on Wall Street’s Good Side

May 24, 2012
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Nothing better illustrates the core critique of the Occupy Wall Street movement against the financial sector’s dominance of our political institutions than the spectacle of high-profile Democrats, like former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, fretting over the “tone” of the Obama campaign’s advertisements targeting Mitt Romney’s days as a vulture...

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Breaking the Code of Omertà at Goldman Sachs

March 19, 2012
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“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...

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A Billionaire Comes A’Whinin’

December 7, 2011
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The Wall Street “veteran” Leon Cooperman has written an “Open Letter to President Obama” that provides us with a glimpse into the mindset of our 21st century corporate overlords. He’s upset not with President Obama’s Treasury Department or his Securities and Exchange Commission, or even his Department of Justice or the IRS. No, what’s...

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The Banks Lose Control of the Optics

October 6, 2011
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The mainstream press has been predictably abysmal in its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the “money honeys” over at the New York Times, looks at the demonstrators as anthropological curiosities, as if they’re from a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea. The Times’ Ginia Bellafante calls the...

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For Progressives, Debt Ceiling “Deal” Was A Real Downer

August 4, 2011
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Largely lost in the media din in the closing 48 hours of the debt ceiling “debate” was the fact that the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street high rollers were urging their servants in Congress not to throw the nation into default because it was going to hurt their bottom lines. The last minute...

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A Tale of Two Town Halls

April 27, 2011
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The Republican House members who voted for Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand wet-dream budget are apparently getting an earful from their constituents. And the earful isn’t coming from people wearing Bradley Manning T-shirts, but from crusty old baby boomers who probably voted for the GOP in the last election. Too bad their angst isn’t being...

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In California the Struggle to Save Higher Education Continues

April 12, 2011
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On April 13th California State University students and faculty are organizing demonstrations at all 23 CSU campuses across the state to protest the latest wave of brutal budget cuts. CSU students, faculty and staff, alumni and their families have a special obligation to make their voices heard in supporting pragmatic solutions to the state’s...

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