While the world has been focused on the start of yet another U.S.military adventure, this one in Libya (so many tyrants, so few missile firing submarines), and on an earthquake that moved Japan’s largest island 17 feet, a lot of other news was being reported that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Here’s a quick catch up in case the following headlines passed under your radar — along with some of my own personal observations. “Squirrel attacking residents of Vt. neighborhood.”...

On Friday the big banks that received government bailout money (and are still receiving huge amounts indirectly through the Fed’s low interest rate policies) were granted the right to pay out $22 billion of their profits to investors in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. The main beneficiaries will be hedge funds that have gambled big on big bank stock. Top managers of the banks will also make millions personally, having received a large chunk of their annual compensation in the form...

In the world occupied by Ben Bernanke, things in the economy are moving along nicely. The economy is now “on firmer footing,” he told Congress yesterday. The job market is “improving,” the Fed Chairman also noted. An improvement that still features an unemployment rate of almost 9 percent, where a hefty percentage the new jobs being created are temporary or part-time, and where new full-time positions generally pay less with fewer benefits than similar jobs past. But jobs...

It doesn’t bother me that Republicans in Washington and around the country seek to meet the challenges of badly strained government budgets only with spending cuts while taking tax increases off the table. That’s the Republican philosophy of government after all. What astounds me is that Democrats are letting them get away with this in so many places. Democrats seem totally incapable of making clear certain facts that are so obvious: That not every tax affects every taxpayer; that some...

Across the Middle East people are rebelling. When these rebels are interviewed by foreign journalists one word comes up again and again. It’s not wages. Not benefits. Not even freedom. It’s dignity, an intangible something that goes beyond purely economic and political considerations, something that touches on one’s sense of personal worth. Something akin to this is occurring with respect to teachers in this country. They have somehow become the primary targets of budget cutters....

Here’s a simple proposal to meet the federal budget crisis: Revisit the debate on the Bush-era tax cuts, and take back the extension of lower income tax rates given to well-to-do earners. This won’t completely do away with the need to cut programs for the poor and middle class, of course, and the need to reduce the federal workforce that administers these programs. But it would go a long way toward lessening the pain of these cuts, and do what every poll says most Americans want — to...

Republicans are funny folks, They practice what they preach; They don’t win then convince themselves Their goals are out of reach. No matter how unpopular The measures they enact, They’ve made a true bond with their own, And honor this true pact. Democrats don’t act like this, They’re of another order; They, too, make lots of promises, But honor them? Well, sorta. They’d rather try bipartisan, Seek always compromise, And when the other side don’t play, Think: “Gosh,...

Obama is an historic figure. The first African-American president. He’s not a very good president, however. Whether historians judge him our third second-rate leader in a row, or our second third-rater in a row, now seems to depend on how charitable they wish to be. One of the few really positive contributions he’s making to our governance these days is his role – an unintended role – reigniting progressive politics. While conservatives on the right have furiously and successfully...

While economists and economic policy-makers in Washington struggle mightily to make sense of a slew of often conflicting economic data, from the perspective of most Americans there’s really only one that matters, one that touches them most directly in their daily lives — the Misery Index. First kicked around in the 1960s, it came into wide-scale public view in 1980 in the wake of an oil shock that sent petroleum prices soaring and the economy into a tailspin. The Misery Index number is computed...

Just making mega-millions (or a billion or two) a year doesn’t automatically earn you recognition as a member of The Street’s elite. Certain patterns of speech and behavior must also be mastered. Here’s a few tips for those who aspire to join these ranks. On every possible occasion mutter that you don’t suffer fools gladly. Also instruct employees and others dependent on you for a livelihood to spread the word that you’re someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly....

It’s the oldest political trick in the book, the one used most often by rulers of a nation badly out of economic balance. Divide and rule. Turn the victims of your system against one another. Turn their attention away from the true cause of their problems. We’re seeing an absolutely masterful version of this tried and true manipulation today not only in Wisconsin this weekend, but around the country daily in a variety of guises. It was just a little more than two years ago that the massive...

I know. I know. In these perilous economic times I should be perpetually outraged about the awful governance coming out of Washington. But sometimes the sheer nuttiness, the utter incompetence, the astonishing lack of understanding of basic economics that motivates the actions of those who our failing political system raise up to positions of power, just can’t help but reduce me to helpless fits of laughter. Here’s the day’s choicest example in this regard (though the day is still...

When pols in Washington lie, it’s business as usual. When they actually seem to believe the nonsense they’re spouting, however, it gets scary. President Obama’s recent comments about Social Security suggest that with respect to this issue, the man is so deeply immersed in kinky Beltway thinking he’s lost touch with reality. The president has been criticized for not taking on the entitlement overhangs in his new budget proposals — entitlement programs that along with the...

Here’s the American economy today in a nutshell: Austerity for the poor and middle class; fat city for the rich. Much of this woeful tale is encapsulated in budget numbers coming from both Washington and state capitals. With regard to the former: Late last year two “compromises” between Mr. Change and Hope and Republican bullies in Congress are projected to cost the Treasury $800 billion over the next decade — about $80 billion a year. One “compromise” extended lower...

I’ve been shopping at the same food market for years. It’s not one of those fancy ones, with produce carefully and individually examined by certified food policemen. Nor is it one of those markets that feature an enormous selection of fine imported items and the choicest meats from around the world. It’s just the kind of place where most Americans get their basic grits on a regular basis. And boy, did I get a shock when I did my marketing there today! I can’t say that I have...

With a new party taking a major share of power in Washington, bringing with it smaller government priorities, it’s time to think about dramatic moves to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. It’s time, in other words, to consider abolishing the present merit-based system of federal employment, and bringing back the old spoils system of hiring and firing.  There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about a government system that employs people based on their relationship to a ruling...

Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia, was rumored to be involved with another man. There was no proof, but Caesar divorced her anyway because, as the saying went then and now, Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion. Which brings us to the matter of the health care law that will soon land in the Supreme Court for a final decision about its constitutionality. One justice on that court is Clarance Thomas. His wife, Virginia Thomas, according to a newspaper account “is rebranding herself...

It’s silly to wonder how the U.S. economy is doing. We have two vastly divergent economies in this country, one for the rich, who are often linked in one way or another to Wall Street; the other for the poor and the increasingly-ground-down middle class. The former economy is doing just fine, thank you. Not so the latter. Here’s a couple of numbers that encapsulate this neatly. According to an estimate reported in the Wall Street Journal, compensation for the worthies on The Street came...

I used to be bothered by core rate blather about inflation. I thought it preposterous. I believed it was merely designed to ease people’s worries about the true rate of inflation by pretending that food and energy, two absolute necessities of human life, could be excluded from a “core rate” measure because they’re “volatile” — as if most other factors that go into computing inflation are not also volatile from time to time. But core rate thinking doesn’t...

By the time the Federal Reserve completes its plan to funnel another $600 billion into the U.S. economy by buying treasuries and mortgage-based bonds from banks, it will have added an estimated $2.3 trillion to the nation’s overall money supply. And it has done this without causing inflation — at least the official inflation rate posted by the government. How has this been possible? What’s the secret of this amazing monetary feat? Here’s the explanation. The primary effect of...