This, folks, is why Thomas Franks called them the wrecking crew:

In my mind, there are four primary catalysts behind the causes of our financial woes. The first is governmental monetary and tax policy that provides way too much liquidity and encourages ever rising asset values. The second are the major banks that took advantage of deregulation (particularly Glass-Steagall) to create monstrous speculative enterprises backed by government supported deposits (Yves Smith has...

For critics claiming we cannot afford health care reform for our own people in which 45,000 uninsured die annually — a report I admit may be high — consider these apples. It costs about $400 a gallon to deliver fuel to our troops in Afghanistan. The Pentagon reports it costs about $1 billion for ever 1,000 troops in that land-locked nation which has an infrastructure worse than the poorest barrio...

I was a big fan of Obama and felt he would be very good for the country, but I am one of the few supporters that hasn’t been surprised at his lack of reforms thus far. It was obvious he was going to defend the status quo and attempt to address the country’s problems through the existing political lenses. I have always thought that this would fail and at that point his “real presidency”...

If you drive a car in virtually any city or town in this country you probably think the parking ticket situation couldn’t be worse. Silly you. It’s actually much worse in other parts of the world, and nowhere worse than in the U.K. There are so many god-awful parking tales coming out of the U.K. these days they appear in its media almost as often as local weather reports. Perhaps the worst abuses...

In many parts of India you can see people enjoying bhang/hashish (or cannabis/marijuana) by the roadside without attracting a look of surprise or disapproval. It is only when the Western world began to raise hue and cry that people in the urban areas began to smoke/drink it discreetly at the occasional activation of the dormant laws. In nearly 80 per cent of India it is still openly consumed (generally in...

Hello there, Dr. Estés here w/ a tale of being mix-mastered in the house of mirrors passing for health insurance– or not. The cadeusus w/ sword and serpent once meant instinctive balance of mind/spirit, (serpent considered helping messenger between heaven & earth) w/strong dose of protectiveness toward body via symbol of flaming sword, to fight afflictions. Nowadays, seems more like poke in eye...

Biting the hand that feeds me, I think it is a bad idea that President Barack Obama is urging Congress to kick in an extra one-lump $250 to each of the 57 million seniors, veterans and people with disabilities because they will not receive cost-of-living increases in 2010 from Social Security benefits. It’s not that I prefer to go without. If Congress goes along with the president, and key leaders say...

Symbolism comes with a heavy hand these days as Stock Exchange traders cheer at the Dow hitting 10,000 while the national employment rate heads for double digits. The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street keeps widening as money jugglers, who caused the credit crisis that led to bailouts with taxpayer billions, are getting record bonuses while those who do real work in the world, such as airline pilots,...

I would like to invite all writers, editors, commentators and readers to make some major predictions for the future that they believe will transpire by or around certain future dates. I ran this idea by Joe Gandelman last week who told me to run with it. These “revelations” can concern science, technology, environment, wars and militaries, climate change, healthcare, religion, politics, economics, business,...

What is common between Saudi and Chinese officials/leaders? Whenever they speak be prepared to leave a lot of room for interpretations. So let’s see what it means when Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal (the long-time director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al Aamah, and the Saudi ambassador to the US) finds similarities between Osama bin-Laden and Robin Hood, a hero...

As I’m sure you all know the Dow closed on Wednesday above the 10,000 mark, the first time it has done so since October of 2008. The boost was largely the result of good earnings reports from Intel and JP Morgan/Chase. Certainly all of these things are good and I am not going to try and dismiss them as otherwise. I firmly believe that good news is good news no matter what. However at the same time I am...

Afghanistan produces over 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Many Afghans, among its predominantly rural population of around 28 million, simply grow and cultivate opium poppies across some of its vast territory that is equal in size to the state of Texas. Most of Afghanistan is very arid and mountainous, not fit for any agriculture or productive human activities. The export value...

From Yahoo: Just one year from the much discussed “death of Wall Street,” major U.S. banks and securities firms are set to pay their employees about $140 billion this year, according to a study by the Wall Street Journal. That’s a record level, just passing the pay levels of the boom year of 2007. Elsewhere people are taking the largest pay cuts since the Depression: The Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Some good news/bad news on the economic front. The good news is that the Dow has approached 10,000. The bad news is that retail sales are still lousy. The good news: Stocks rallied Wednesday morning, with the Dow industrials nearly hitting the 10,000 level for the first time in a year, following better-than-expected quarterly profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan Chase. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU)...

As a journalism teacher I am often asked: Should media cater to what interests the public or PUBLIC INTEREST? In recent times the media, with honorable exceptions, has brazenly catered to the lowest common denominator (generally pandering to the basest instincts) under the cloak of infotainment. Arianna Huffington, the moving spirit behind Huffington Post, has started HuffPost Impact to talk about issues that...

How much danger terrorists pose in Britain? “The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by Jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white ‘neo-Nazis’ who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a ‘race war’, says Johann Hari in The Independent. “The police are warning ever-more urgently that similar attacks seem...

Yesterday I wrote a post questioning the need for so many countries in the 21st Century, particular vulgar, repressive military dictatorships, to have nuclear weapons. My premise was not the relative civility of non-nuclear nations vis-à-vis those that possessed nuclear weapons but the proper use of U.S. military power. However, many nice places can be found that have no nuclear arms, nor are they signatories...

The Senate Finance Committee finally voted 14-9 its sweeping health care bill out of committee Tuesday with the lone Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine on board. Whoopty doo. Now maybe we can get down to business and fix the system. This bill is a massive subsidy to private insurance carriers who are not happy because it falls short of universal coverage which would mean more bucks in their pockets with little...

Health care reform is now formally on the move with the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a historic bill that got the support of all Democrats and one moderate Republican. If it isn’t the undisputed bipartisan vote that the White House sought, it isn’t the totally Democratic party vote that the White House feared. So it’s likely to advance the drive to come up with a bill by the...

The Huffington Post reports: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor. “Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” said Snowe....

The prediction: It’ll pass on a straight party line vote.

What’s so lucrative about selling chicken to China? We sell them parts of the bird that we won’t eat – like the feet. Worth just a few cents a pound in the U.S., American chicken feet fetch 60-80 cents a pound in China. From the Xinjingbao of the People’s Republic of China, this strategy session from Chinese researcher Xue Chung explains more than you ever wanted to know about what China...

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The big political news story of the day — in fact, one of the biggest arguably in decades — will be the perhaps pivotal Senate Finance Committee vote on health care legislation. And, in that vote, most political eyes will be focused on Maine’s Republican Senator Olympia Snowe. Will she vote for the plan and give it at least a smattering of bipartisan aura? And, if she does, will she face political...