Blogs: Making It In America

The worldwide battle to get away from the coal and oil industries has been underway for some time. Countries are fighting to gain a share of the new green manufacturing industries with millions of jobs and trillions of dollars on the line. Country after country is executing plans to grab a share of this new industry. But not us. more »

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Here is a short video with highlights and interviews from the Take Back the American Dream conference panel, Making It In America: Reviving and Strengthening U.S. Manufacturing: more »

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What a complex web we weave, when our lives are ruled by greed. Verizon is an example of what corporate greed (the 1%) is doing to our middle class and vulnerable (the 99%). It is a highly profitable company, just gave its CEO a huge raise, but dodges its taxes (schools, roads, police, firefighters for the 99%), and to top things off is asking its workers to take cutbacks. more »

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Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

There’s about to be a big change in the federal budget debate. In the end, the big winner will be the part of the budget that supposedly is so unpopular — federal spending — that a candidate for office this year cannot currently say he or she supports it without risking massive political condemnation and reprisals.

It’s been relatively easy to be anti-spending up to now because the reductions being proposed have mostly been theoretical and weren’t really likely to happen.

The irony is that this is about to change because of something that spending cut proponents themselves demanded. The sequester — the spending-cut-only alternative they insisted on if the anything-but-super committee failed — that will occur on Jan. 2 is the opposite of most of the plans that have been part of the federal budget debate up to now: It’s in place and will happen unless Congress and the president take some action to prevent it.

And it’s forcing companies, industries and voters to face the reality that the spending cuts could actually occur and, despite what they’ve been saying publicly, that they really don’t want it to happen.

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I wonder sometimes if Paul Krugman ever gets tired of being right. Or does he get bored with it, given how often it happens?

This week, at the Take Back the American Dream conference, Krugman shared the stage with Chris Hayes for the "End This Depression NOW!" plenary session. (Videos of all the plenaries are available on our conference videos web page.) During the plenary, Krugman held that we could be at 7% unemployment right now, if Congress had extended part of the Recovery Act that sent money to states in order to prevent worker layoffs.

Today, a couple of news items suggest Krugman may be right again.

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I love it when a politician just lets it all hang out and says what he really believes: more »

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Following is the talk I gave to the Take Back the American Dream conference panel, Making It In America: Reviving and Strengthening U.S. Manufacturing.

You have undoubtedly heard the numbers, almost all of them bad. more »

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Yesterday in Ohio candidate Mitt Romney said he would clamp down on China's currency manipulation. Today he is still not asking the House Republicans to bring the China currency bill up for a vote. Mr. Romney has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership and put his actions where his campaign words are -- or not. more »

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Starbucks has launched an initiative to restore American jobs, and as part of that effort is ordering mugs from an American company and helping revive an Ohio Rover town! The company is earning some great publicity for itself. Like this:

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The New York Times' Keith Bradsher reports that China's domestic economy has been stumbling of late due to a slowdown in construction and a sluggish retail market.

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