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Good Morning! Rise and Shine! Get that Cup O' Joe...
break out the O.J....hang out with the pooch...time to check out the Funnies!
[The 1946 coal strike] is the most momentous event in the country's peacetime history."
- Evansville Courier, 1946
When most people think of labor unrest in America they think of the 1930's, or the various major strikes of the 19th Century. The fact is that no year, before or since, saw so many strikes, and such a large percentage of people on strike, or so many industries effected by strikes, as 1946.
Never before had labor unions flexed so much muscle.
But that success also sowed the seeds of labor's long-term downfall.
Picketers (and dog) in jail during Rochester General Strike
In an article published today in The Observer, it is reported that Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee of the TARP program, will issue a report this week calling for the ouster of the chief executives of Citigroup, AIG and other institutions which have received government bailout funds.
Additionally, Professor Warren is reportedly also set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be "wiped out". "It is crucial for these things to happen," she said. "Japan tried to avoid them and just offered subsidy with little or no consequences for management or equity investors, and this is why Japan suffered a lost decade."
European Union ministers said it is “critical” that convergence on accounting standards is reached on the continent to ensure that the region’s banks are not placed at a disadvantage against U.S. competitors.
The International Accounting Standards Board, which writes the rules used in Europe, must cooperate with the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board, the ministers said in a statement today following a meeting of European finance ministers and central bankers in Prague. A goal is to avoid “competitive distortions,” they said.
This evening, Bill Moyers interviewed William K. Black, the former senior regulator during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, who blew the whistle on the Keating Five (the U.S. Senators implicated in taking “gifts” from S&L bankster Charles Keating was convicted of racketeering and fraud in both state and federal court after his Lincoln Savings & Loan). Black is now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, and the author of the recently released book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
This week is an Bill Moyers Now interview with Simon Johnson and PBS interview with Black Swan author Nicholas Taleb.
I was planning on showing Frontline but the last two documentaries have been truly infiltrated with some sort of special interest agenda. The deficit response was all about gutting social security and Medicare and the documentary on health care never uttered single payer universal health as an option. I think we all have watched enough corporate and special interest spin to last a lifetime so I am not even linking to them.
With that, below are interviews which you missed are a profound must see.
As you probably already know, 2010 is the year to die is you are really wealthy. The Estate Tax disappears for one year only. Under the Bush plan, it would have reverted to its pre-2001 rates of 55% of estates over a $2 million exemption. President Obama proposed a 45% percent rate over a $7 million exemption.
Even this was too much for every single Republican and 9 Democrats in the Senate, who voted by 51-48 to enact a 35% rate over a $10 million exemptioin.
Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to pay more than $210 million in bonuses through next year to give workers the incentive to stay in their jobs at the government-controlled companies.
The retention awards for more than 7,600 employees were disclosed in a letter from the companies' regulator released Friday by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. The companies paid out nearly $51 million last year, are scheduled to make $146 million in payments this year and $13 million in 2010.
"It's hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year," Grassley said in a statement. "It's an insult that the bonuses were made with an infusion of cash from taxpayers."
(AP) -- The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide swath of employers eliminated 663,000 jobs.
That's pretty bad, but would you believe that the real numbers are actually worse?
For instance, when you look at the official BLS report you discover that the headline 8.5% unemployment rate is actually seasonally adjusted. The real, non-adjusted unemployment rate is 9.0%
It gets worse. The number of people no longer counted as in the labor force increased by 339,000 in the past month (seasonally adjusted).
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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