economic crisis

The House of Representatives, which returns from its summer recess today, and the Senate, which returned Monday, really only has one legislative priority it should be focused on before members return to the campaign trail: Treat the jobs emergency as the emergency that it is, and enact the legislation that will get unemployed Americans back to work quickly. more »

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After two days of hearings, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission seems to be drifting away from the biggest questions that haunt our economic system like the oligopoly of banks that are far too big to fail, the mal-distribution of wealth, and the failure to prevent destructive financial innovations. more »

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You can smell it on their breath – the tell-tale fumes of “financial innovation.”

Drink it and you start to believe that financial innovation actually exists. The commissioners and their witnesses are being ever so careful to insist that our economy will make room for it, not discourage it, not to over-regulate it , and to find market forces to enhance it. more »

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Shelia Bair, the head of the FDIC, is the first witness get near to addressing the major underlying causes of the crisis: the distended, distorted nature of our finance-heavy economy. She discussed “economic distortions” and the “disproportional” size of financial profits in our economy. more »

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The heads of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America came to testify and said........just about nothing. more »

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In its second panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, heard from Kyle Bass, of Hayman Financail Advisors, who read a statement that had some real dynamite it. I don't know this guy, but it's pretty clear no PR flack scripted him. more »

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The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day. Bill Scher is traveling; he will return Monday.

Thursday's news that the nation's gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter comes with a lot of asterisks. A few of them:

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In the previous post, I included a quote from Franklin Roosevelt's Second Inaugural Address.

We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

It was a short quote, only because I couldn't very well quote the entire speech. I wanted to, because so much in it speaks directly to where we stand today, the kind of country we want to be, and the choices that will lead us closer to that goal — or farther from it.

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