How State and Local Subsidies Fuel Inequality
"When large corporations controlled by billionaires are given lavish taxpayer subsidies, the rest of us get stuck footing more of the bill"
Real Economy Project
The Media's Disgraceful Acquiescence to Larry Summers' White House Boosters
-- by Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Selling Larry Summers as the successor to Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve Board is a tough job. The basic problem is that Summers has a dismal track record to overcome, while his main competitor, Janet Yellen, the current vice-chair, has an outstanding record.
The Other NRA: How the Insidiously Powerful Restaurant Lobby Makes Sure Fast-Food Workers Get Poverty Wages and Have to Work While Sick
-- by Steven Rosenfeld
While thousands of fast-food workers were preparing to walk off their jobs earlier this summer to seek raises to $15 an hour, the industry's corporate lobbyist, the National Restaurant Association, was celebrating a string of political victories blocking state minimum wage increases and preempting local sick day laws.
Failing Up to the Fed, A Reporters' Guide to the Paper Trail Surrounding Larry Summers
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein reports that Larry Summers is the "overwhelming favorite" of the Obama team for the job as Federal Reserve chairman.
Wisconsin Workers "Fight For Fifteen"
Wisconsin workers are joining the "Fight for Fifteen" -- better wages for those at the bottom of the U.S. payscale. Three cities in Wisconsin were among 58 across the United States where thousands of low-wage fast-food workers walked off their jobs to demand a living wage, safe working conditions, and the right to unionize without being penalized. The coordinated actions on August 29 constituted the largest fast food strike in U.S. history.
Scott Walker Goes to Bat for "Legal Thievery" in Budget Bill
State Senator Glenn Grothman, Assistant Majority Leader of the Republican Caucus, is leading the charge to protect consumers from Wisconsin's rapacious rent-to-own industry. Governor Scott Walker's $68.2 billion budget bill contains provisions that would rollback common sense regulation of the industry, which has been in place since 1985.
End Too Big to Fail: New Bipartisan Bill Aims to Prevent Future Bailouts, Downsize Dangerous Banks
Last week, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) introduced the first bipartisan legislation aimed directly at putting an end to "too big to fail" financial institutions and preventing future bailouts of America's behemoth banks.
Pete Peterson Linked Economists Caught in Austerity Error
A team of economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst broke a huge story this week that was promptly picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and newspapers around the globe. The economists proved that the essential underpinning "of the intellectual edifice of austerity economics," as Paul Krugman put it, is based on sloppy methodology and spreadsheet coding errors.
JP Morgan Gets an Award for London Whale Fiasco, Will Schneiderman Harpoon the Corruption?
A JPMorgan Chase employee stepped onstage at a black-tie gala on Wall Street last week to accept a "best crisis management" award given by an investor relations magazine. The bank, which was recently the subject of a U.S. Senate investigative hearing and an ongoing FBI probe into $6.2 billion in trading losses known as the "London Whale" fiasco, is not the subject of ridicule -- but praise -- from its cronies on Wall Street.
Detroit's First Day under an "Emergency Financial Manager"
As of today, Detroit is under the control of a governor-appointed Emergency Financial Manager (EFM). The Motor City is the largest district in the nation to have its voters and elected officials sidelined by this new experiment in "crisis management."
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