OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out? Part 2
The turmoil in financial markets and the bailout to the tune of $700 billion has turned the public eye and wrath on Wall Street and Washington. While millions are aware of the triggering causes, ranging from predatory lending to deregulation to insatiable greed, what isn’t so obvious is the longer-term process that brought our financial system and economy to the edge of the abyss.
OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out? Part 2
The turmoil in financial markets and the bailout to the tune of $700 billion has turned the public eye and wrath on Wall Street and Washington. While millions are aware of the triggering causes, ranging from predatory lending to deregulation to insatiable greed, what isn’t so obvious is the longer-term process that brought our financial system and economy to the edge of the abyss.
OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out? Part 1
In a vote that was heard around the world, reactionary Republicans along with some progressive Democrats in the House torpedoed a bill to stabilize financial markets. The compromise deal was better than what was initially proposed by Bush and Paulson, but did little to stimulate the economy or attend to the crisis of everyday living experienced by millions of ordinary Americans — who, it should be said, played by the rules.
Save Main Street not Wall Street!
The Bush administration has proposed a massive bailout plan of at least $700 billion (maybe as much as $1.7 trillion) to stabilize the financial system amid the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee, and the president are pushing for Congress to rapidly pass the plan this week with little debate and no amendments. The right wing and the banks want a plan that gives a blank check to Wall Street with no oversight.
LETTERS: September 23
Wrong? Capitalism in crisis The truth about oil 9/11 Land for the landless
OPINION: Ramming through the bailout
Bush, Paulson make Dillinger look like a Boy Scout As the Bush administration attempts to ram a bailout package of nearly one trillion dollars through Congress, it begins to feel like Colonel Sanders asking the public to trust him to take care of the chickens.
OPINION: The Rosenberg case revisited: heroes and betrayers
The ugly days of the 1950s witchhunts returned to the headlines this month, hitting me in a very personal way.
OPINION: A dose of 'socialism' to forestall financial disaster
It's easy to become apocalyptic contemplating the vast sums of wealth being destroyed in the unfolding financial crisis gripping Wall Street. The economic tsunami unleashed there will soon reach every corner of the nation. Indeed globalization will insure that few in the world will escape suffering.
To help everyone, lift the blockade
The world has watched with enormous admiration as storm-battered Cuba pulls itself together after the unprecedented devastation of Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike.
EDITORIAL: Bail out Main Street
The largest crisis in U.S. financial history shook the foundations of Wall Street this week. The aftershocks of the earthquake that toppled the 158-year-old Lehman Brothers investment bank, Merrill Lynch and the AIG insurance giant — all within a 24-hour span — shook capitalist markets around the globe.
