Blogs: An Economy for All

This week, Mitt Romney made the bold prediction that in four years, his policies would reduce the unemployment rate … to the level economists project it will be if we don’t do anything: 6%. more »

More »»

Thursday's reports that unemployment claims are edging downward take on a slightly different cast after reading a complaint filed with the Labor Department detailing how a new Florida law is hindering unemploy more »

More »»

At today's Amazon shareholder meeting in Seattle the company announced that it is dropping support for ALEC, while fudging questions about its taxes and voting down proposals to report its efforts to address climate change and to disclose its political spending.

more »

More »»

This can't possibly be right. more »

More »»

It's about time for us to break into the closed-door negotiations in Congress over a surface transportation bill.

more »

More »»

This strange political season gets stranger by the day. The things I'm hearing and seeing from Newt Gingrich and Cory Booker today reminded me of a song from one of the last (and, in my opinion, underrated) albums by Culture Club; my favorite band from my 80's youth. The lyric that comes to mind is from the band's 1984 single, "Mistake No. 3," when Boy George sings of people getting "dragged into a conversation they can't hold."

It's been 28 years, and I still can't figure out what that song's about. But, it's not hard to figure out that, despite coming at Mitt Romney's Bain Capital history from opposite sides, Newt Gingrich and Booker let themselves get dragged into conversations they can't hold.

More »»

Originally published at Capital Gains and Games.

It’s not hard to understand the political motivations behind Boehner taking the position he took on the debt ceiling. He needs the support of the House GOP caucus to remain Speaker. All indications are that, as has been the case since the 2010 election, House Republicans are not in a compromising mood on anything having to do with the federal budget.

Threatening another cliffhanger battle as he did last week doesn’t provide the leadership Boehner said was needed to deal with this. Instead of simply complaining that the president had “lost his” courage when it came to the budget, Boehner should have displayed some of his own.

More »»

At Citigroup, shareholders had their say on CEO pay -- and they yelled, "No damn way!"

Concerted action by shareholders, workers and public interest groups compelled corporate change in several other cases this spring as well.

At least three CEOs resigned. more »

More »»

The 2012 presidential election may go down as one of the strangest political seasons in recent memory, for the simple reason that the influence of the financial sector in politics, policy and the economy has caused Republicans to sound like Democrats and Democrat to Sound like Republicans — usually with confounding results. When Republicans sound like Democrats, like Newt Gingrich attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, they tend to start arguments they can't win. When Democrats start sounding like Republicans, like Cory Booker defending Bain Capital, they tend forfeit arguments they could win. That's because, in both cases, the politicians are arguing about the wrong things, in order to avoid the real argument  — the one America needs to have, and Americans need to win; the argument over what kind of economy we will have going forward.

More »»

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

I can't tell you the number of focus groups I've watched and polls I read where the overwhelming opinion was that federal spending could be cut without any decrease in the quantity and quality of what the government does.

Hell...As I posted about in 2010, even the recommendation from the co-chairs of the Bowles-Simpson commission -- who definitely should have known better -- proposed a reduction in the number of federal employees and the number of consultants but, presumably based on the assumption that the government wouldn't have to stop doing anything it was already doing, didn't suggest any activity be eliminated.

More »»